Yesterday's Kiss (among the first poems I published)

I had recently been telling a friend how much my poetry has changed since I started in 1999. Most of those older ones are hidden away now in an archives section of my site, partly because they don't represent my style so much anymore and partly because I simply would have way too many poems on the site, otherwise. (I do, still :-) At any rate, this is one, pulled out of the archives file.




Yesterday's Kiss

Our bodies play
hide and seek.
Your tongue probes
my mouth, searching
for yesterday's kiss.

You know
how to ask for sex
in six different languages.
I wish you were as
proficient in love.

When you leave,
I bury my head
in your pillow,
dare not breathe,
lest your scent
take me captive again.

Later, your voice crawls out
of my answering machine
'I want you'
Using that red dress
you bought me,
I smother your pleas.

Pris Campbell
(c)2001

Art: Jenni by International artist Janet Butler
copyrighted and used on my site with permission.

This one's on my site with music. Go to Yesterday's Kiss at Poetic Inspirations.


Published in Blackmail Press, fall 2002

Featuring the music of Duke Lang

A native of Canada, Duke has four of his songs on his page at MySpace. He's an excellent, successful musician and a kind man. An unbeatable combination, in my opinion!

If you're not a MySpace member, you can't comment on his songs or poems, but take a listen and read. I love all of the songs he has featured, but admit the St Augustine one is a particular favorite of mine. Duke tells me he's headed to a recording farm in Norway to lay down another CD soon, so that's good news!

While you're on his page, I'd recommend a side trip to listen to the music of John Spillane and Korine Polwart. Just click on their photos in his top eight to go to their songs. John is Irish and has a wonderful lilting accent as he speaks and sings.

Enjoy! I've posted to Duke that I'm featuring him here, so if you leave comments I'm sure he'll see them here at some point.

Pris

Lake Worth, Florida (click to enlarge)

Since our area has been sort of a 'hurricane alley' these past two years, I thought I'd like to share where I live and show how exposed so many parts of the city are. Lake Worth is considered to be a suburb of West Palm Beach, an hour and a half north of Miami on the Southeastern tip of Florida. Lake Worth does, however, have its own municipal government, library, and beach, which is across Lake Worth Bridge you'll see on the map. Once across, if you head north on the island for about five miles, you're at Donald Trump's mansion, the old Mar a Largo. I live in the unincorporated area off of Lake Worth Road to the west of this map, about a mile and a half west of the part you'll see in the photo. To see more of the area, here's a mapquest site map that can be zoomed or moved from east to west.




For those of you who read my blog fairly regularly, you'll recall photos taken over at the ocean from an earlier post, but here's a shot showing one of the sidewalk cafes that are all over downtown, along with antique shops.



Below is the ocean close to dusk, after the sun worshipers have gone and the walkers, joggers, and beach critters take over.

Before

Before Big Mama died, before
she forgot her daughter's name-
my weeping cousin with eyes
dark as caves, before she forgot
her dearest Big Papa, forgot
how to dip her hands deep into
flour and lard to make her famous
pineapple upside-down pound cake,
before she forgot how kisses fierce
as the thunder's roar used to feel
and before her glass angels
flew off with her best lamps,
sofa, four poster bed, and her Bible,
Big Mama had her vision.
Her seventeen year old grandson;
hair fallen out from chemo, leg
taken earlier by cancer, skin
thin as parchment on his dying bed,
tubes now draining his life more
than giving; her Michael, son
of my dark-eyed weeping cousin, rose
from his bed, walked to her house
in the night , whole again, and kissed her.
He kissed her then slid through a space
filled with yellow and gold sparkling lights
to kiss his dark-eyed weeping mother,
and they joined hands together in a circle,
the kind of circle that can never be broken.
Not even when bodies and minds fail.

Arlene Ang

Arlene Ang wrote the following poem last year. I love it! I'd like to thank her again by posting it here and encouraging you to read more of her poetry. Arlene edits the Italian version of Niederngasse Journal and is an excellent poet.

On Waking with a Different Woman
for Pris

Imagine the morning:
that lost bracelet around
my wrist, sun filtered by organdy
curtains, tinnitis and sore
throat like distant sea
in a conch shell.

The bed is peeled of its
worn look, Schumann's concerti
softly thread through air,
my voice is back. Daffodils
in a crystal vase remind
me of yesterday:

the ten-speed bike,
propped against a rusted
steel cabinet, its tires unchanged
from the day I pedalled
across town for
breakfast at Janelle's.

The garage smelled
of fresh paint; I moved freely like
the top that spun only from
other people's hands. Giotto's
Lazarus on the wall
didn't make the room turn.

Imagine old friends
coming over for a barbecue
and I call everyone
by name. Sometimes it's so real
I taste their favorite drinks
on my tongue.

Arlene Ang
copyrighted 2005

'Round The Mulberry Bush

(Those of you who post on MySpace have already read this one on my blog there three days ago)


Like so many decisions, made in haste;
his hand on your arm, bidding you stay,
while the crazy bluebirds circle, crying
yes, yes, and the great willows bend
in the wind, moaning yes yes.

And so you lay your head next to his,
listen again to his lies, try to believe
those bluebirds and the willow trees
and the flash rain that comes, soaking
everything back to bright green.

Your body melts to the bed when he enters you,
whispering secrets only two lovers share, but
you know they all lie--the foolish bluebirds,
feathers like sharp glass, the two-timing willows,
even the greedy rain, and so you rest pennies
upon your eyes when he has finished, draw
a shroud up across your face.

You recite your prayers to the tooth fairy,
Romeo and Juliet, and the weeping lady
across the street, knowing
tomorrow he will kill you again.

(c)2006

Thanks to all of you pulling for me. The headache isn't gone, yet, but it's MUCH better. When a med gives one of those whoppers--at least to me--it takes a few days for it to completely clear. Still just not doing much with my eyes and that's helping. Since I have so very many med reactions, not all headaches, you can see why I approach a new med as an experiment in terror:-)

Still in hiding...

Still no creative blog today. The new med the tues gastro doc switched me to gave me literally the worst headache I ever remember having. I called yesterday afternoon and no, I'm off of that one onto another one, but, for the first time, I have some wee sense of what migraine sufferers go through. I'm typing this with my eyes closed since light still hurts my eyes. By last night, all the bones across my face were throbbing, along with the top of my head. I had no idea what to do to stop it except tylenol and turning the lamp to dim. It's hurting again as I move around this morning, so I'll just have to wait and see when I can put up something creative again.

Pris...now to open my eyes and see how many typos I left.

No blog on Thursday

Another long day with my CFIDS doc, south of here. I'll be back Friday. In the meantime, if you've not read any of Sharon Olds' poetry, I'd recommend you google her. I already knew she was amazing, but as I've read more I've been even more impressed.

Find an especially great link to her work or to her? Post it in the comments section, if you don't mind.

Pris

Primavesi by Gustaf Klimt

Another painting and artist I admire, courtesy of the old Artmagick site. The colors are truly magnificent in this particular painting and I love the stance of the girl, staring directly out at us from her surreal world.

Songs To A Midnight Sky

I named my blog after the following poem I wrote in 2003. I posted it when I started the blog, but it's so far back into the archives now, I thought I'd bring it up to the top again.


Daily, you draw the line
between yesterday and today,

dare me to cross,
dare me to get close.

I stand in the backyard rain,
shirt soaked, jeans sucking
against hungry thighs, hear
you move around in the den,
stereo rising high
over a flash of lightning
to the east.

The Lettermen...

But of course
you would put them on
to taunt me

Defiant, I sing along,
face the night sky,
swallow raindrops, dance,
until I know that yes,
I can survive anything.

Even you.

Later, when I shiver out of wet
into dry, you already sleep,
back walled to my side of the bed,
dreaming your own song alone.

Pris Campbell
©2003

Published in Blackmail Press

A change of pace....the Sand Game

Another Kim Komando fun site. Draw lines under and around the falling sand with your cursor and all sorts of coloured images will form. I did a screenshot of the start of one of mine. Click to enlarge.

Be sure you look at the options under the green to change from pen to grass to other things. Instructions open from a window on the main page.

Unexpected Corsages

She writes me of Death's impending
trip through her doorway, this woman,
this once girl-woman, my old roomie.
She has prepared her Will, settled
her affairs; she's ready, she tells me.

I never expected this in my fifties,.
Wrinkles, gray hair. Not this..these losses,
she cried, when ovarian slowly etched flesh
from her sister's pale, rising bones.

During our poverty-stricken graduate school
years, we stuffed extra rolls into our bags
for next morning's breakfast, wore cheap
jeans, blouses and sweaters with frayed seams.
We danced, loved, crammed till well after midnight,
giggled, cried, told each other secrets, but

my friends are slowly slipping away.
I press them into the bed of my memories,
like a corsage of colorful flowers, saved
when the big dance is finally over.


(c)2006


for Ella Ruth, Malley, Sandra, Skeet, Don, Carlton, Dale, and most of all, right now, for Pat.

Chalk Art

Thanks to Sarah on MySpace, I found these incredible chalk drawings by Julian Beever. Julian Beever is an English artist, famous for his art on the pavement of England, France, Germany, USA, Australia and Belgium. Beever gives his drawings an almost unbelievable 3D illusion. Click on his name to see more.

Off for a few days

This fall created more pain than I expected, so I need to take a few days off and let it ease off. Can't sit, anyway. Ice packs, warm showers and tylenol to calm things down. Fun, fun, fun.

Who knows? Maybe things will get better faster than I think and I'll be back sooner with a dazzling post.

Pris