I haven't disappeared...

Between my husband painting the office (the fumes) and a bout with the stomach virus going around, I've not been online a lot recently. I apologize for not making return visits to those of you who've been good enough to make comments and will do so soon.

I did just have three poems come out in The Cliffs: Soundings, a print journal, so I can't provide a link. Some of my haiga are appearing in Simply Haiku and in Sketchbook Journal. I've been lax in submitting lately. Push me. Prod me.

Two out of three Ain't Bad....Meatloaf AND ELO with Telephone Line

I still love Meatloaf's Bat Out Of Hell LP. This was one of the great slow ones. He went into a decline after this peak. I saw him in a small theatre in the eighties, trying to make a comeback, but still singing the songs from that original album.




and another favorite from the seventies..ELO. They made music that was great to dream to.

Sketchbook is online

Click on the name to visit the new issue of Sketchbook, a short forms/haiga journal. Poems, too. Cover by the unbeatable Ron Moss of Tasmania. I've got a few haiga in the issue, too.

Enjoy!

They're doing our floors...

The dog and I are ensconsed on the other side of the house in the den while they rip up filthy, stained carpet almost 25 years old out of this side of the house to put down laminate. I'm hopeful this will also help a major allergy problem. I keep hearing all sorts of good feedback from people that getting carpet up helped their allergies in a major way. Cross your fingers. It's extra nice when the thing that may help is something you like, too. I was raised in a house with hardwood floors and ,while those are unaffordable, these look like the real thing to me.

Below is a shot of the floor going into the living room at the front of the house. The dining room is literally stacked with furniture from the living room. Today they're coming down the hall into the closets and the master bedroom. It's gonna look gorgeous!

At any rate, I'm on and off of the computer briefly till this is done.



EDIT:

The floors are finished as of Thursday. The office is being painted this weekend so a lot of things are still lying around until that's done, but here's a shot of one clear place at the street end of the living room.

Graveyards

A friend of mine from Finland recently sent some photos of graveyard angels and headstones near her home. So...here's a few to share.





I doubt we'll be seeing many more graveyards appear like these, anymore. No space to bury people anymore. And, who can afford a gravesite, a casket, a funeral AND an expensive sculpture?? Solvent Green time, perhaps?

This darn flu...

It has me pinned to the floor. Am spiking temps of five degees with chills and the headache from hell. I didn't disappear. I shall return.

Pris

Nudist Camp (haiga)

(click to see full size)

Our banana tree out back is sprouting its first bananas (the little shoots on top, not the dark part hanging down)

Hair!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kim Komando featured a site today that allow you to upload a photo of yourself, full face, and 'try on' hairdo's that different celebrities wear. I was in a mood to do something inane, so here I am even with a Brad Pitt cut!

Go HERE to try for yourself.

Okay...any preferences??:-) (click to enlarge)

...and my final three.

Surreal



(cartoon of White Rabbit as sung by the irreplacable Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane. A must see!)


Passion



Libertango by Yo Yo Ma with clips from 'The Dance Lesson. This man's music stirs my blood. I heard him on a simulcast on the educational channel live at Carnegie Hall in the eighties and stood up alone in the room after screaming bravo! What can be more passionate than his music combined with the tango?? Wow!


Aging



Both Sides Now, with clips from the movie, Love Actually. I love this later version of this song.



I didn't get in the sensual sexual per se. Next time:-) Think Amy Winehouse's F**k me pumps vid, which I found thanks to Collin.
Now, if they will accept the challenge, or have time to do it, I tag Lee Herrick, Ray Sweatman, Jim Knowles, and Iri ..don't ask me to bungle the spelling of her last name. It's Finnish and too complex for this early in the morning. Nomiker..Blue Skies Over A Redhead, a poet who posts most of her beautiful poems on MySpace.

Continuing with Nick's challenge (see post below this one)

Okay, I was going to do this in spaced out installments, but got carried away and picked more that represent attributes of my poems or myself as poet. Two up today. The last three up tomorrow.

Disillusionment



(Diamonds and Rust..Baez) I remember how moving this song was when I first heard it and it still gets to me until this day. One of the themes that runs through my poems is the falling in/falling out of love and the disillusionment that comes after more than one major love has passed by.

Intensity



(You're beautiful..James Blunt) When I first heard James Blunt sing, I had to buy his CD. The intensity of first times, be it love or anything else. It's a feeling we should never lose.

Nick Bruno has thrown out a challenge.

I'm going to take a shot at it on the installment plan. I originally found his link on Sam Rasnake's blog.

This is the essence of the challenge, but go to Nick's blog entry on Thursday, January 24 for the full skinny and his choices:


If you were to liken your poetry to a musical genre and match it in its intrinsic elements of poetry to a specific form of music, artist or even song(s) what might that (those) be? So let's say for the sake of comparison that if you were to choose 5 songs; pieces and/or artists which would best approximate your poetic sensibilities and style which would they be? If possible post them in You Tube form.

Here's my first one.

Tell It Like It Is

The all interview issue of Mipoesias is out.

Courtney Campbell, a talented poet living in Brazil, interviewed me for this issue and I interviewed John Sweet, a poet I much admire. Enjoy the issue! (my pic and bio are at the bottom of the interview with John)

Go to www.mipoesias.com to read it. This link opens in a new window.

EDIT: A new issue is out now at that link. Go to the drop down box on the opening image , hit down arrow, and choose 'all interview issue' to see the above. Thanks. I'm also in '2007 poetry' in the list.

For Martin Luther King

I wrote this poem last year and may have posted it here before. I've honed it some since then and am reposting in honour of his day. I heard Martin Luther King give his I Have A Dream speech during the March On Washington. I was working that summer in Manhattan and rode down with members of a Black church in Brooklyn, where I worked, in a chartered bus that day. Make no mistake. King was a special leader. For that day, skin color was forgotten. We gathered around that long wading pool and believed in his dream. It's been a long time, but I hope it still will come true.


Martin Luther King: MIA


We're looking for you, Martin.
We're searching Selma,
back-row bus seats,
crowded lunch counters,
Dylan's guitar,
Hoover's files,
your I Have A Dream speech.
We're combing back through days
when protest and love
beat in the same heart chamber;
days when we thought black
would meet white
and white would meet black
in a role reversal melt
down of ivory keys played
on a Sunday organ in churches
pouring Christ's blood
into silver chalices
for whoSOEVER believed.

Show yourself, Martin.
Do you sit, unseen,
in laps of the homeless,
the disenfranchised,
beaten and raped women,
molested children
and sad,jobless men,
telling them love
can still rule the world
and no hand will then ever be raised
with whip,chain or fist to innocent backs?

We need you, Martin.
Take up your staff.
Strap on your sandals.
Lead us from temptation
and forward into a salvation
of arms outreached in an endless ballet
where princes remain faithful
and trapped swans are set free
by long journey's end.


(c)Pris Campbell

A youtube slice of the event:



Peter, Paul and Mary...Baez and Dylan perform before the speech.

Splatter

                                    for Jackson Pollock

Tell about the demons you archetyped
into those paint splattered canvases,Jackson.
Clattering paint cans and feet ablur,
you whirled around your emerging images;
a shaman.
The wind couldn't pace you.

Now, art critics fractal your paintings,
see equations in your shifting Scheherazades,
your Rorshachs for 1001 nights.
Their theories impress Berkenstocked art lovers,
confuse curious tourists up from Orlando.
Your dance was cut far too short.

Unlike you, I hold my own dark dreams close.
Short-shadowed by the noonday sun, they puddle.
You were the brave one.
You flew headlong into treacherous skies
where not even Superman could save you.




photo of Pollock in action.



Splatter