Latest haiga

(You not only have to click on the image, but also click on the bottom right-hand icon when it comes up, to see full size)

Sherman Alexie

People seem to love or hate this Native Indian poet's writings. Read more about him HERE (I'm one who loves his work!)

Follow the link at the bottom of the page for more, as well as a link to other Great Modern Poets.

Pris

Beaches

Your tossed shirt
brings the scent
of cool rain, salt air.

You move quietly,
thinking I sleep,
but my desire

this night is a tsunami
and so I tug down
your jeans, pull you
into remembrance
of depths we have visited
on other such nights,

nights when I'm
convinced Neptune,
himself, sits,
waterwings at the ready,
on our bedroom floor.

Other times we would
play first, splash
in the tides,
giggle, tickle,
but tonight...

tonight, my hands twine
seaweed through your hair
and we dive until
dawn finally beaches
and, gasping for air,
we sleep.

Pris Campbell
(c)2003

Published in Erosha

Day of Rest

Folks,
I've had major freezing with my puter since I updated Yahoo Messenger late two days ago. I've deleted the program, did a system restore and have a few other troubleshooting things going on at the time, but won't know until after a day of intermittently hitting on the hyperlinks on my desktop if the problem is solved. In the meantime, here's a picture I took off of a Schooner of the sky near Stonington, Maine in 1986. I'll be back tomorrow. Wish me luck the problem is solved!
Pris

Fantasy Challenge

Go to cafecafe (link on right) and join the Fantasy Challenge to raise money for donations to the Red Cross. If you're not a member of that blog, email didi menendez through her profile there with your poem, since non-members are welcome to enter, too.

*************

Your smile slices my breastbone open
and I bleed pink wantwords across
the restaurant, watch while confused
men and women pick missed you, kiss me,
touch me from clean dresses and jackets.

Your hair is graying.
I'm twenty pounds heavier.
You ask if my husband is good to me.
I inquire if your children turned out smart.

You lay your hand on mine and our feet
dance to that room, the room where we
wanted to be from the start of this night,
the room with the blue shiny spread and Degas
prints on the walls, the room where
we urgently throw our clothes over a white
fuzzy chair and discover that our bodies
haven't forgotten the old rhythm between us.

In this night when the stars sink
close to the ground and the clouds
step aside for the wild, rising moon,
I'm twenty again. You're twenty five.
Dylan and Baez sing live on the radio and
we pledge love forevermore.

Later, zipping your trousers, the marks
of my lips on your face, your body, you say,
We'll do this again.
At that moment, that one nano-grain in the
sands of our time, I see in your eyes that
we won't meet again and know, too, it's fine.

You hand me the rose you pilfered
from our table upon leaving, pull on your jacket,
bend for one last lingering kiss.
A thorn from the rose pricks my finger,
draws blood as the door closes softly behind you.



Pris Campbell
(c)2005

Internet Romance!

Elvis...before he was the Sequin King (I had to get my mind off the Katrina posts)

I found this clipping in my old album about Elvis' induction, the heartbreak of teenaged girls everywhere when that happened. In this newspaper photo (click to enlarge), you can see the soulful eyes and pouty lips that, along with his voice and hips, made him a legend. One thing I've never understood...why do all of the Elvis impersonators choose to imitate him when he was in his decline, his body puffed with drugs in those horrid rhinestone outfits and capes. That man wasn't the Elvis our hearts throbbed for on the Ed Sullivan show. He WAS an impersonation.
I took this photo of three of my friends, sprawled across my mother's bed, holding Elvis' first album. Believe it or not, I still have that album, though it's scratchy now and almost unplayable from all of the use it got at the time.

Another slice of life over the years...

Missing Persons Site and Disaster Relief for Katrina

Sept 19:Washington Post Article about the ethics of looting in the aftermath, focusing on 'looting' ordered by the mayor to get fuel, a generator and a stove to help people.

Sept Four: Washington Post. CHILDREN RAISING MONEY FOR KATRINA VICTIMS!

NEW FROM GINGER (Sept Three). A general relief information site is HERE

JUST IN TODAY (SEPT TWO)..THIS LINK FROM A CANADIAN FRIEND ABOUT CANADIAN PLANS FOR ASSISTANCE. CLICK HERE. Thank you Canada!!

JUST IN FROM GINGER: Click HERE for a listing of places to stay for victims of Hurricane Katrina! Pass the word along.


New!! September 3 Washington Post Article re New Orleans

New!! Read the Open Letter to George Bush from Michael Moore on the top righthand side of his main website.


********original post below*******


In Kim Komando's newsletter today, she provided links for disaster relief organizations needing donations to assist the victims of Katrina. She also has the link to a site that is beginning to list the names of people in that area who are trying to get word out that they're okay, as well as a list of names of people relatives and friends are looking for. Go to her webpage HERE.

***Countries all over the world are pouring in offers of help. So far, Bush hasn't accepted any offers. Why?????********

Pris

Proposal

The Question

Remember when you asked me
the question-THAT question?
I do.

I was child, disguised as woman,
still gathering gold into red wagons.
By the time I turned back
to answer, you had gone.

Your footsteps sparked
through labrynthed streets,
then faded, traveling
places I could no longer follow.

Pris

Featuring the poetry of Tim Peeler

Tim Peeler is another contemporary poet I admire greatly. He has graciously given me permission to post the following poem as an example of his work. Tim is the second in a series of poets whose work I'll be periodically featuring. (If you visit his website, you'll discover who owns the hand on his shoulder)

Tim, thanks!

Poem for George Harrison

Think will you
of the gray morning mist,
the cat coiled on a carport chair,
the bark of coyotes by the distant river,
the heavy groan of the garbage truck, urging
the highway stoplight to blink red, then green.
Think then
of spotted horses edging into the meadow,
steamy nostrils flared-
Yes, it's a big picture, so
think of a mountain, black and broad enough
for a backdrop, quiet and royal in the dawn,
where light collapses in long blue shadows-
Think of a song;
then think of the sun.


Tim Peeler
(c)2005

Read more about Tim Peeler, including information about his publications at his Website

Here are a couple more of his poems published in Thunder Sandwich

Galveston- A collaborative poem

(Note:Ginger requested that I post this poem about the Galveston Hurrican, mentioned below in my note about Katrina.Philipe and I wrote this, not as a haibun, but with that form in mind, using poetic verses rather than haiku between the narrative. True haibun is usually also in present tense)

Galveston

The roving eye of the worst hurricane in history, set aim for Galveston on September 8, 1900, overturning homes and uprooting trees in its wake.

I lay out my afternoon tea cup,
set my pot on to boil.
A tree crashes my roof, upsetting.

Clay Braughn, the youngest of the rescue volunteers , reached Claire Thornton's home four hours after the tides first spilled over shore, sending half-dressed survivors slogging for higher ground. He hadn't wanted to come on this mission, but had to prove he was no coward. Not like his son of a bitch father before him. His legacy.

I search through the remnants of my
mother's china, now scattercrashed
to the wood floor of this house
my grandfather built.
Its once sturdy roof weeps
water onto the sofa
where my mother soothed
soft cries, my father lit his cigars,
and my last husband flaunted
his whore before taking
the next train to Houston.

He rammed the door with his axe. Clattering, footsteps, then silence. The roar of the wind seemed to mock him. Another elm toppled in the grove. Is anybody there, he called. In town they said Claire Thornton danced barefoot in that same grove at night, hair swirling behind her.

He bangs at my door,
that same door I closed once,
not to open again, especially
to brash young men thinking
me foolish enough to come running
with uncombed hair and my face
unrouged or powdered.

Leaves hurled themselves at the windowpanes and mud sucked at his boots. Bile slid from stomach to throat as he broke the hasp with his axe, knees trembling when he fell through the door.

He stares at me, this intruder
glassy eyed, fists tight.
Has he never seen a woman stoop
to gather her china before?

A chunk of wood crashed through one window, rain close behind. He reached down and grabbed her arm but she jerked free. Don't you understand , he shouted. The storm will blow down your house.

He speaks of storms come
to destroy me. but
what does he know of storms
I have already survived, of kisses
given, then taken away, hands reached
through lonely nights over smooth sheets
touched by no husband's back
and no mother to smooth my damp hair

He grabbed at her again, but she ran into the next room, lock falling behind her. Axe lifted to chop again, water bubbled over his boots and the house shuddered along with him. The axe tumbled from his hand as her laugh slipped through the door. Stay here and die, crazy old loon, he screamed and ran for his horse. A buggy wheel flew by, bounced off a tree and headed west. He thought of his father once, then mounted and followed.

He thinks of death as the enemy,
but I welcome this stranger
roaring across tree tops and land
to find me, embrace his sweet song,
wait eagerly, until walls tumble
and lonely nights claim me no more.

Six thousand men, women, and children were killed in the storm. All of Galveston was destroyed. When asked about Claire Thornton later, Clay Braunghn said no-one was home. He was commended for his bravery.



A collaboration between Philipe Nicolini and Pris Campbell
(c)2003


Published in Verse Libre, summer, 2003

Art: Photo of Great Storm Statue commemorating the Galveston Storm

Flash Poems

Three interesting approaches to multimedia poetry.


from The Iowa Review

Sexual poem in Beehive
(in the 'select' box, click on 'hyperbody' from the drop down menu)

From Poems That Go

Accessible Poetry-An article by Joan Houlihan of Boston Comment

Click on the title for the link. Personally, I've grown tired of reading poems writ by poets who seem more interested in showing their ability to manipulate the language than to write a poem that, as Ted Kooser says, helps the reader to see the world in a new and different way; to communicate, but to communicate in a fresh 'non-trite' way. The 'accesibility viewpoint' isn't in much favor now, despite two Poet Laureates lauding it. Billy Collins has been ridiculed on at least one major blog for dragging poetry back into the dark ages. Read the essay. Judge for yourself. Comment, if you feel moved to do so.

The Pact

Each Spring, when the leaves first attempt
to wriggle their way through stiff stubborn
branches, the lost girls float high beneath
the ice of Lake Okawalla.

Their eyes track the skaters--
those pirouetting birdlike figures
in thick woolen mufflers, the daring
ones skirting the thinning spots that gleam
like opals throughout the warming lake.

Rabbits and deer shy from lake's rim.
They've seen the gray, unblinking eyes, heard
the moans in the night, listened to stories
of suicide pacts, stockpiled pills, told and retold.

They lift their heads instead, watch the stars
and moon shiver-dance across the dark sky
until a dawn sleet crowns thorns onto the trees
and tears finally melt rivulets into the crackling ice.

Pris Campbell



Inspired by a reading of the book,
The Lake of Dead Languages, by
Carol Goodman.