A Day of Rest...Sigh

Overdid yesterday, folks. Unless I rally later, nothing new and exciting will appear in today's post today. I'm just gonna crash, ignore everything and loll out.

Hey, tomorrow's my birthday! I think I've only had three or four actual 'parties' on my birthday, in my entire life. This is the first:-) I was just turning five. My house is behind us and the little girl next to me is trying to hog my cake lol.

Calling Hot Male Poets

Jenni and Pris will be doing an calendar featuring male poets. The calendar will be printed up and on sale through cafepress. We're asking for volunteers. No pay. Just for fun. One man will be chosen for each month of the year. The proceeds will go to charity.

Our cover poet has already been chosen and what a start!

A sensuous photograph. It doesn't have to be in boxer shorts (but go for it if you want), but something sexy! A swim suit or comfortable jeans both work great. Young or older poets, we'd like both. And you don't have to have the 'perfect' body.

Send us 2-3 choices of full body shots to jenninot@aol.com with cc to campris@bellsouth.net. Submissions are to be in by Oct 1st. Send a good size. We'll resize to fit on the page!

If you're chosen, you'll be asked to sign a release and a send us a poem to be posted beside your photo. Previously published poems are fine.


Join the fun???

Identify yourself clearly in the RE section. We don't open mail we don't recognize at all. Poets we know will more likely have their mail opened.

Didi mailed around the announcement link on Jenn's site so go HERE to see all the commotion and wish lists lol. Add a comment in either place.

Tech Tech, Here Comes the Tech!

My friend, Lloyd, is coming over today to help me find out why I've had the blue screen of death three times this week. The message I get back is that it's a corrupted modem driver, but those Windows messages are ultimately guesses. Leave me a story of the craziest thing you've ever done so I'll have interesting reading when I come back online later today??

My driver is fixed. I also now have cleartype installed on my LCD monitor..yes,it makes a difference and I'm also now a volunteer computer that can be used when idle in the same group Lloyd's in doing cancer research.

I'm also pooped. I'll be back tomorrow.

I also see that, so far, nobody has any exciting stories to tell. Lucky guys, you're out living them today:-)

Pris and her Wicked Stepsister

Jenn

Jenn asked what a waterbird is. I posted this on her blog and promised a photo (Jenn, had the grass been shorter, the feet would've shown. Found no shots of them out on the street. It's dead-end, so they wander there, too. Sorry)

Water birds can fly, but they have webbed feet at the end of long skinny legs and tend to nest in reeds along the water and not in trees. Typically, their legs are longer and skinnier than a regular bird's and they have longer necks for diving for food, as well as wondering through yards for bugs. The webbing isn't obvious from a distance, like a duck's is, but get close enough, you see it

Selling Our Wares

Boston. Early Seventies. My friend and I were leaving to go hawk our male nude calendar at Harvard Square. During these years, only one other calendar had come out with bulked-up guys dressing like the milkman or the postal carrier. BOOring. We asked our friends to find our models and also asked men we knew. Regular guys. Interesting faces, not Mr. Hollywood.

We developed the photos in a makeshift darkroom in my bathroom, had to hussle hard just to get someone to print it. We didn't make a cent, but it was fun...and oh, the escapades we had doing this. One of the funniest was photographing one man in an old graveyard out in the country at dawn. I mean, who other than us would be there that early? Here come a group of little ladies headed our way. Have you ever seen a guy put on his pants and run at the same time??:-)

Good thing we got the shot first!

Another slice of the pie called Pris.

Soda Jerk Days

We Are Not Afraid

The We're Not Afraid site is a wonderful collection of photographs, based in England and containing photos from all over the world. It's a message to terrorists that the human spirit is still very much intact. This site is well worth a visit.

I sent this one to the site, taken about a year and a half ago.



Pris
A friend just sent this link to the BBC NEWS commending this website.

Rebels

It's been a great many years since he was killed, but he and Marlon Brandon were the classic rebels of their time. I thought I'd continue with my 'bad boy' theme today. Why do they appeal? How do they push our buttons? Do you recognize this face?

Fast car. Fast car.
Liz in his thoughts,
the reek of his last
same-sexed lover still
on his sheets.

Fast car. How fast
can it go? Rev up
the motor. Let
out the throttle.
Full speed around
that next curve.

If he flies at the speed
of light, will he disappear
into the moon's belly,
he wonders?

He stubs out his last cig,
chugs down more Daniels.
The ghosts still
won't slip off
his shoulder blades.

He's two people,and even
this fast, loud
mouthed
little sports car
can't make the one
he hates go away.


Pris

PS on the 'bad guy' post two down For Keros

Keros posted a link to his blog in comments, after posting that the photo looked like him. I thought he was kidding. You've got to see it, so I'm making it a hot link right HERE. Read his profile, too. An incredible story. An incredible artist and poet, too.

Home

It sat across the street from the High School, where my father's office was located. He was, first, Superintendant of Schools, then District Superintendant. We weren't allowed to buy the house, but we had to pay rent for the twenty years my parents lived there until they bought their own home at the edge of town. By then, the School Board no longer required that the Superintendant be within 'slingshot length' of one of the schools.

My room was the upstairs one over the porch and my friends and I would climb out through the side window at night and lie on that slant, staring at the stars and dreaming of our lives when we grew up.

a thousand
diamonds to chose from...
midnight sky


Question for my readers. Did you grow up in one house or many? What do you remember most about the house that felt most like home? In mine, a closet was located on the upstairs landing just before the left-hand ninety degree turn to the last three steps to the upper floor. The closet door was just below waist high for an adult. The only way to get into the closet was literally to crawl in, since there was no way to add stairs in such a small location.

Sha Boom

Have you ever known this guy?



Tell me about the baddest, sexiest guy or gal you ever dated or pined after as a teenager.

Mine was named Billy Hicks and his hair was like this, only brown instead of black. Elvis pout lips. Bedroom eyes. Dumb as hell. He had flunked and was two years older then the rest of us. I sat beside him in ninth grade Civics class and couldn't think of the lessons over the beating of my heart. The crush lasted about two months, but oh, the fantasies during that time!

Pris

Hurricane Dennis

It's already cost lives and homes in Cuba. We're on the East coast, but this is just a taste of how wide the effects of the storm are.
Click HERE, HERE, and HERE, to see some shots taken just after dawn this morning. The blurring is due to low light and tree movement. The clouds are like a race track overhead.

Pris

Ash

In our youth, mouths still plump
with unspoken truths, you tattooed
your heart on my breast, lay
beside me on sagging mattresses
in cheap coldwater flats.
Trees curved sideways from
the blast of our innocence.

Our feet took different paths, but
I never forgot you.

Now, ash in my hair, mouth puckered
from too many soured kisses,
we find each other again.

You kiss my tattoo, faded and scarred,
bring my breasts close to your chest.

Trees move in the rising winds, dip
branches low, sing songs of a quieter
celebration deep into the sighing night.




Pris Campbell
©2004

Art: Venus by Ingres