Are you a Yankee or a Rebel?

Click HERE to take this test.

For my British friends, I realize we're ALL 'Yanks' to you, but 'them there be fighting words' for a Southerner to be called a yankee here lol.

I scored 71 percent Southern , by the way. I was raised in the south and went back for visits until my folks died, but have spent my adult years living in Northern states. Florida, btw, is geographically south, but culturally north as well as a wonderful mix of everything else.

Pris

Devolution A Cinquain

beach sands
cool to fine ash
under charred glassy stars
adam and eve seek new Edens
feet numb

Imitations In Peach

You're a peach, he tells me in his
best Gary Grant imitation. Hair combed
just so; white dinner jacket, black
tie, his gift of faux pearls dangling
from perfectly manicured nails.

He watches old movies, pretends
he's DeNiro, Redford, Astair.
Once, after watching Rocky, he tossed
me around, then wrapped me in bandages,
Frankenstein whirring ominously
in black and white on the telly.

I like his Mr. Ed the best. I get to ride
on his back, feed him bad apples, slap
him hard on the rear while he bucks,
shimmies and guffaws in delight.

Pris Campbell
©2004

Half-open

Bukowski Never Did This, a book by Jack Saunders

I received an intriguing book in the mail by prolific author, Jack Saunders. The book consists of a variety of short topics, ranging from social commentaries to diary entries to letters to descriptions of 'Art Brew's life, Jack Saunder's doppelganger. Threading thoughout the book is this question: how does a full-time working man with long hours also find time to write? The book can be read by opening it up at nearly every page, since the parts stand alone, as well as being part of the whole.

Thanks for sending this to me, Jack.

For purchase information, write Jack Saunders at saunderj@bellsouth.net or check the publisher at Underground Literary Alliance

Featuring Kit Wilson of Katikati, NZ

Kit Wilson has had a spot on my guest page on my website for several years now. While his creativity is focused far more on his video work, his graphics and work in the community, he has the eyesight of a poet, too. This is one of the poems from his page. Thanks, Kit, for sharing your razor sharp humor with me throughout the years.
****************

The Long Way Home


I try to write
about sunshine kissing your face
and
the luminous touch of your skin at night.

I try to write about
bodies moving in sensual unison
and
how the smell of your hair makes me cry.

Like poets do.

Alliterative adjectives and clever construction seem empty artifice.
They fail to fulfill and they fall away.

Words cannot begin to convey even
the most unremarkable aspects of who we are.

By way of example:
What sentences suffice as I stare in fascination at the imprint
your head leaves on a morning pillow
and dust motes dance in your passing.
What words come close to the inconsequential incomparable knowingness
Of a simple sidelong glance.


This is the now on which the universe of us is built.

Solid.

Soft.

Unspoken.

Lost in thought
I take the long way home.


Kit Wilson
(c)2001
Dedicated to my wife, Sue Baker Wilson. She is my sunshine, my way home.

Singing the Blues

The infection is back. I can't write. I'm in pain. I've only had rare short times out of pain since the end of March. A lot of the pain turned out to be a massive yeast infection brought on the antibiotics. I find that when I'm in the middle of emotional times (like yet another bacterial infection now), my writing becomes whiny and very bad. It's only after, well afterwards when I've come to some terms with these rough patches that sensible words begin to come. I need to write a poem, but the page is empty. I wish I could be one of those people who write terribly clever and upbeat funny things when they're in the midst of life struggles, but...

A haiku I wrote last year to share.

autumn to autumn
the soles of my shoes
still clean


Pris
(I AM grateful for a great GYN who's now working with me on this. So few doctors care about their patients any further than their body parts, anymore. So...I'm lucky. Hey, maybe I'll even write a poem about HIM one of these days:-)

More from the Hammond Gallery

Karen: from The Hammond Gallery by Adam Prison.

I love this painting. I'm still trying to break my writer's block. Sometimes interesting art can do it.

Pris

Cleopatra by Rocco Spider

This painting and others can be found at this super site I discovered, The Hammond Gallery. E-cards of the artwork can be sent from there, too. Does this inspire a haiku, a short short poem or just a funny??

her asp
toppled Egypt...
and Richard Burton

Letters Not Sent

From today's online Washington Post, the outcome of the trial of one of the abusers of Iraqi prisoners that was in the news two years ago. She was photographed holding a leash bound around the neck of a naked Iraqi prisoner. Yes, atrocities go on in war, but war IS an atrocity. We don't need to add to it.

Here is a further account in the Sept 28 online Washington Post

My other opinion?? The officers who sent untrained young servicemen and women, rather than trained interrogators, to gather information should receive the same sentencing, if not more.

Below is a poem I wrote about the sexual degradation/abuse when I first read about it.

Letters Not Sent

There were ten of them,
skin the color of desert dust.
We culled them from cells
the size of barbwired closets
into that courtyard where
we laughed , watched
them strip, toss off torn rags-
discarded cloth fluttering
like yesterday's butterflies, made
them spread their cheeks wide, enter
the next man down the line,
made our own chain of daisies
like the ones made in childhood,
took photos not attached to letters
or sent (Son, I'm so proud),
knew we were showing
those terrorists who was
boss and serving our
country too, but oh mom,
I still smell their fear and
their sex on my hands.
It's been weeks now.




Pris Campbell
©2004

Before The Sea Turned Cruel

Taken in Naples, Florida on the Gulf Coast 1989

Silence

Silence: by Henry Fuseli from ArtMagick.com

body-
dance for me once more
before sunset


pris campbell
(c)2004

What Are Friends For?

Barb and I met when I was 29 and she was 32, in Boston. We worked together and played together. The male nude calendar was one of our more venturesome projects. More important, we became lifetime friends. I still see her almost every year. Before CFIDS, when I could travel, I went back to New England to visit her. Now, our times together are when she comes here. Our friendship continues, despite the many changes we've both gone through. Long term close friendships are a rarity and to be valued.

This photo was taken in 1989, the year before I became ill, in my back yard here in Florida, and it's one of my favorites taken over the years. Click to see a larger version.

This photo was in the Boston apartment where my first husband and I lived while he attended law school He snapped it as we were about to go out and hawk our calendar at Harvard Square. Barbara is one of the few friends who's seen me go through my many metamorphases (and husbands) through life.


Lastly, this one is of Barb's last visit, Feb 2004, over at the ocean, 3 1/2 miles from my home. Did I mention she's a fantastic cook? She spoils me every visit!


Other solid long-time go-back-forever friends, too. Don't feel ignored, guys...Margie, Mar, Joe more...

In your comments, describe a friend who's been there for you over the years, if you like...and in what important ways. I'm curious what makes some friendships click and not others. Yes, an unanswerable question, but I'd like to hear ideas, anyway.

Pris

Ron Androla

Ron Androla's new book is out. Click on the bookcover to see it more clearly and look for ordering information HERE. The following is a review by the publisher:

To say that a book length collection of the work of Ron Androla is long overdue would be to merely state the obvious. However, if one knows the author and his purpose it is a bit more comprehendible. The advent of the world wide web as well as the ever advanced and ever improving technology has vastly changed the poetry underground from what it was years ago when poets such as Charles Bukowski, D. A. Levy, Steve Richmond, Jim Chandler, and yes, Ron Androla had work published in hundreds of small mimeographed and hand stapled journals, virtually all of which, are now nonexistent.

Buk and Levy are dead. Chandler’s semi-retired. Richmond is MIA, but Androla’s still plugging away after almost 30 years at the forefront of what can now be referred to as a “movement.” With his unique style and a voice, which is most definitely his own, Ron continues to go forward as writing is as important to him as the very air he breathes. By and large it’s what this man lives for. That is the reason we haven’t seen a collection such as this until now. The author is a true poet. He’s not a self-promoter, a shoulder-rubber, or someone who works constantly to manipulate his way into print. This is exemplified by his notes at the beginning of POET HEAD when he apologizes for not being able to remember everywhere many of these poems have appeared.

In my mind as a publisher, this was a book that “needed” to come forth. It was almost like a responsibility. The access to all types of poetry on the internet has made being or becoming an original difficult. The work of those who have attained such stature should be preserved at all costs. This is how I felt about this book and how I continue to feel. I am grateful for the opportunity to have facilitated its publication and proud to be associated with it.

Charles Whitley
Editor/Publisher
Rank Stranger Press


Another introduction to Ron's writings comes by way of a link to a recent write-up and interview by Jack Anders in this MiPoarticle. The article speaks to the core of what post-beat poetry and Ron are all about.