Cirque Du Soleil - Hula Hoops

From Kim Komando's 'cool site' letter for today:

Flexible Elena Lev
There are few things as engrossing as a good show. And in case you think I'm talking about television shows, think again!

I saw Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas a while back. It was amazing. If you've never seen Cirque du Soleil, you're missing out.

That's why I'm recommending today's site. It's a video of Elena Lev, a member of Cirque du Soleil, performing.

At YouTube, you'll see a video of Elena performing her famous hula hoops dance. I know – hula hoops? It is much cooler than you think!


I used to know how to hula hoop, but not like this! The woman is amazing. Well worth a looksee.

You can either go to this youtube link:

www.youtube.com

or play it directly here:

dream (a haiga)

Click to Enlarge.

Apple Pie

In one of my past lives
when I wasn't busy being
Cleopatra or Ivan the Terrible,
I sailed with the Pilgrims
to the New Land. Only eight,
I watched dragons lift nightly
from frothing seas, fins
flared magestically like a
fat lady's fan, hissing
and slapping their tails
till the sun gods rose red
with rage every morning,
driving them back under.

My mother called me a liar,
washed my mouth out with soap,
but I'll say this:
there was no Plymouth Rock and
Priscilla never married John Alden.
She ran off with a good-looking Indian.
Her grandson snatched Custer,
made him skin and cook buffalo
for the entire tribe till he died.
The army generals made up that story
about Custer's Last Stand to force Congress
to do more about the 'Indian Problem'.

Now, if I were a liar, would I come clean
about all that stuff and mess up
everyone's apple pie vision of history?

Michelle Buchanan's Plan

Please read the opening post in her new blog and consider her request. It's an excellent way to honour the men and women who've been killed in Iraq.

Go to Operation Poem.



Click to enlage and get some idea of the numbers of U.S. service men and women killed in different states, in Iraq, to date, from the Palm Beach Post.

Innocence

It's kind of like learning
to slip your bra off under
your sweater so he can touch
you--those little tricks you learn
over the years in some dark Chevy
or maybe if you're lucky, a sofa.
He learns to come with his jeans on
begging for more and maybe you
come too if he slips his hand down
your panties and touches you just
right. You learn how to find
that safe line between teasing and pleasing
because once you cross to the other
side you can't ever go back and you
learn later that innocence is an aphrodisiac
and no boy will ever again quite love you
like he did that night with one hand on your
breast, the other down your pants, 'your' song
on the radio and the moon writing
its name on every heartbeat

Duke Lang's blog: From a Penis museum to a deserted dance floor in Iceland.

Duke Lang is posting some of his travel journals on his blog on MySpace. You can go there to read them, but not comment if not a member. In this post, he visits an honest to god penis museum (they're preserved lol) and waltzes by the sea with his love, Disa. Well worth a read. Not only can this man write songs and sing, he can write with the best of them!

Duke Lang's MySpace post. If you click on his photo beside the post, you'll see his music profile page, but more blog posts are on the page, as well. The ones above it describe more ventures through Iceland on perilous roads with cabins in the most extremely deserted areas with food and blankets for stranded travelers.

He attached a photo of Disa on the dance floor he described. Notice the old speaker waay up top. Yes, they biked there! This post is magical.

The Oxford Project

Kim Komando's online newsletter brought an interesting site to her reader's attention today, and I found the site fascinating. Here's her description and the link:

It's amazing how time changes things. But, since time creeps up, most of us don't notice the changes.

That's why I find today's Cool Site so fascinating. Twenty-one years ago, Peter Feldstein took photos of residents of a small Iowa town.

Then, he returned and photographed the same people again. But this time, he brought a writer to record their stories. The result is an amazing slice of life.

It's remarkable to see the honesty in the photographs and stories. These people didn't pose for the camera. And their stories capture the essence and beauty of small town America.

To view this site, go to oxfordproject.com

...and the ocean reclaims

(Click to enlarge)

Making Eve (posted on my MySpace blog yesterday)

Spewed out of God's Sixth Day WIDE
open post utero mouth, these zygotes,
twin embryos, now grown, one buried
inside the other, tumblefall into Eden.

History's first birth defect.

That story about the rib?
History's first cover-up.

Nixon, listen up.
God did it, too!

No woman to ride side saddle
for long, Eve sharpens overgrown
nails, aliens her way free
through Adam's wimpy chest.
She flirts with the serpent,
finishes off the apple, tosses
Adam the worm and the core.

Original sin. What fun, she trills.

With a shake of her fuck-me frizzled
hair and one hand lifting an,
as yet uncarressed breast, she takes up
with a horny caveman. Their two dozen
mix-breeded children scope uncountable
later debates about Origins,
birth control, and the true
author of the Karma Sutra.


Pris Campbell
©2004

MiPo Print (OCHO) is out and it sings!!

The following announcement comes from Didi Menendex

Our new print companion to MiPOesias is now available.

http://www.lulu.com/content/337361

Contributors include:
John Korn
Jenni Russell
Jack Anders
Helm Filipowitsch
Ron Androla
Pris Campbell
Laurel K. Dodge
Amy King
Tom Blessing

If anyone is interested in reviewing OCHO, I will be happy to send you the PDF.

I will be mailing complimentary copies to a few of you as well.

Thank you,
Didi Menendez
OCHO and MiPOesias Magazine
www.mipoesias.com

NOTE: Several people have asked about the meaning of the journal's name. Tom Blessing was right in his comment. I just checked with didi. OCHO is '8'.

Fathers Day (Click to enlarge)

I was lucky to have two good parents. My father died of cancer twenty years ago this Christmas and my mother followed him ten years ago this September. The first photo is their wedding picture and the second, one I especially like, was taken in the late seventies under the mistletoe in my old hometown.
I'm grateful for both of them. I'm thinking of you, Daddy, on Fathers Day!

Our Hurricane Wilma kitten grows up!! (Click to see full size)

Those long time readers of my blog may remember the post I made last fall of the litter of kittens who rode out Hurricane Wilma in our house. The mother, a stray, carried her babies into our garage unseen when my husband had the garage door open, doing something in his van. The discovery was made when mom suddenly for the first time became insistent, almost desparate to run inside the front door whenever it was opened. Finally, my husband let her in and she headed straight for the garage where, yes, four tiny mewing kittens were found. In this first shot, Stubby (as I'll always think of her, though her name has changed) is lying on top of her sibs about four weeks after the storm hit.
Yes, we kept them until weaned, then found good homes for each one. I'm glad, since they were all adorable. The single shot is of Stubby propped up against the French Doors, looking up at me. Just adorable. It was hard to give them up, but we had to make a decision and decided mom was all we could take in, with a dog already king of the house at that point.

Recently, Steve did an A/C job for the kitten's mom and when he came home, he told me how beautifully that wee kitten had grown up. Today, we drove over, by invitation and I got to see our baby as a large cat. Those eyes are still beautiful!

The second photo is with Stubby and her new mom, trying to coax her out into the room. I think she thought we'd come to take her away again into the eye of Wilma, winds roaring around her, since she hid most of the time we were there. We did manage a few good fleeting shots and had the pleasure of seeing her at the beginning of her adulthood as a cat. Godspeed, Stubby. You were a pleasure to have in our home!

Tommy In The Sky With Diamonds

(Some of you read this earlier on my MySpace blog)

Stars blinked in the sky
that was us, high
in blackened theatre seats,
Roger Daltrey screaming,
seeeee me, heaaaaar me.
Clapton strutted down the aisle
with his MM crazed crowd
banners waving, blood of the
scotch bottle bled for thee--
Elton pin-balling that Wizard
in three foot laced shoes.
Pot so thick you could
slice the air.

Tommy, in rock opera glory,
resurrected across
that hazy Boston banned screen.

Tommy, Tommy,
sing us up the mountaintop.
Tommy, Tommy
lead us to the revolution.

We fell into each other after,
grasping and frantic,
eager to stretch
that fire into forever.


~


I rented the video years later.
My neighbor napped right through it and
my husband cracked lousy jokes, but

I slipped back with Daltrey
to the commune and you,
our bodies sweat-tight,
reliving the night when Tommy
lit up the theatre on Beacon Street.


Pris Campbell
©2003
(revised 2006)

Curious...how many of my blog readers saw the movie, Tommy, or have heard The Who perform it?

This is amazingly well done

A poem in flash, found as a link on the W.O.M.B. blog. W.O.M.B. in my right-hand column of links.

Cobweb.

Turn on your sound.
Pris

The link Brian Campbell mentions in his comment is Born Magazine for more of this type. As he says, this site is very difficult to navigate. Type in the last name in the box above poets. Choices will come up. Click on the one you want and hit the enter key. Good luck!!