I  Am Waiting
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Second Coming
and I am waiting
for a religious revival
to sweep thru the state of Arizona
and I am waiting
for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored
and I am waiting
for them to prove
that God is really American
and I am waiting
to see God on television
piped onto church altars
if only they can find
the right channel
to tune in on
and I am waiting
for the Last Supper to be served again
with a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed
and I am anxiously waiting
for the secret of eternal life to be discovered
by an obscure general practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting
to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and tv rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am awaiting retribution
for what America did
to Tom Sawyer
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

______________________________

I’m in love with this  man and will expect books of his poetry littering my doorstep.   Everything you want to know about Lawrence Ferlinghetti can be found here.

Eva Herzigova by Vincent Peters

From ‘Sweet Seduction’ at: My Modern Art Met

Vincent Peters Photography:  website

Get the World Aids Day animation embed code here

Statistics concerning HIV/AIDS:

• There are over a million estimated people in the USA living with HIV/AIDS (hhs.gov)
• 21% of people that are infected don’t know it (aids.gov)
• There are around 56,000 new cases of HIV/AIDS reported yearly (cdc.gov)
• In 2007, men accounted for 74% of new cases, African Americans accounted for 51% of new cases, and most new cases fell within the age range of 20-49 (cdc.gov)

Project (RED)

Founded by Bono to aid in the fight against AIDS in Africa, Project (RED) has raised over $140 million dollars globally and  helped over 80,000 people suffering from AIDS in Africa receive care and treatment. 

For purchases made on December 1st:

• Starbucks will donate 5 cents for every handcrafter beverage purchased.
• Gap will contribute 1% of their generated revenues from their stores in the US and Canada.
• Dell will double their contributions to (PRODUCT)RED™ from of Nov. 26-Dec. 2.

You can also show your support for World AIDS Day by:

• Wearing a red ribbon, or the color red.
• Purchasing Project (RED) products.
• Making a donation to Project (RED) or other AIDS charities
• Getting TESTED!

__________________________________________

Project (RED) Blog: CLICK HERE

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__________________________________________

xo, Angela

Info/Stats via EXAMINER Dot Com

I guess I’ve got a case of readers remorse.  As in … Boy, did I do something really stupid last week when, for the first time ever, I picked up a People magazine.  Something on the cover caught my interest, and I thought why not?  My bad.  Talk about much ado about nothing.  Who reads this stuff?  There is nothing there but fluff and air — such silliness.  Okay, yeah, I’m saying this just after having returned from the nail salon.  But still ….  Is it too much for a girl with pretty French Nails ( who, by the way, can type very well with them) to ask for a little substance in her reading?

It surprises a lot of my readers and callers that I’m uber-feminine, yet eschew pop-gossip (I find my own life much more interesting) and detest fashion magazines (80 percent ads and who are they to tell me what to wear?).  I actually prefer something more substantial — meat and potatoes rather than tofu surprise, thank you very much.  In case you’re wondering:  Yes, this very much carries over into my sexual dalliances, capers, and pursuits.  When it comes to men, sexy is smart and smart is sexy … dummies move on, please.

But back to that reading thing.  As a child, from the time I was in first grade, I’d been permitted to read the Sunday funnies.  But at 8 years old, I rebelled.  I took the funnies back to the kitchen (where my mother and father, drinking their morning coffee, were reading the "big people" parts of the paper) and handed them back to my parents, saying, "I don’t want to read this anymore.  It’s stupid."  And so was handed the Society Pages, which shortly led to the Community pages, which shortly led to the front pages, etc.  But never, ever the Sports pages.  Just wanted to make that clear. *grin*

Then around fifth grade I began reading Reader’s Digest.  In sixth or seventh grade, I discovered Time and Newseek.  In highschool, I continued with Newsweek, ditched Time, and lapped up every issue of Writer’s Digest cover to cover.  Newsweek was still my main squeeze in college, but I kinda-sorta was its cuckoldress, fluttering the lashes of my sheep’s eyes at The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Harpers, Smithsonian and even National Geographic.  Then there were the one night stands with one glossy ofter another — too many to remember.  Hey, plop an Appalachian girl into the center of Academia with the flash of big city lights beckoning from the horizon and what do you expect?

These days, being an all grown-up girl, I’m kinda-sorta torn between two lovers: Newsweek and The Atlantic Monthly.  Now my beloved Newsweek and I’d actually settled into a comfy monogamy for the last few years.  But there I was at my physician’s office, late as usual, my time moved back so that three to five of the patients would get to go ahead of me now, since I obviously needed to be taught a lesson on responsibility by the all-powerful minimum wage receptionist.  .

But I digress.  What was I saying?  Oh, yeah, The Atlantic Monthly.

Well, I guess you’ve figured out that the magazine I fished from the table was The Atlantic Monthly.  While I can’t remember what I read as I sat there stalwartly taking my punishment with barely a stentorian sigh or weary grimace, I do remember falling in love.  So much so, that I pilfered that magazine and brought it home.  No, I’m not in the habit of lifting reading material from the sundry waiting rooms I’ve occasionally and briefly occupied.  But I wanted to read the magazine from cover to cover and I wanted to order my own subscription ASAP.  Which I did and I did.

So now I’m finally getting around to what this somewhat mindless meandering has been leading up to.  You might remember that last month, as a PSOetry entry, I’d presented the poem, Cathedral — and said I’d be asking you about it the next time we talked.  And we have talked, haven’t we Puzzler, Professor, PQS and HDB?  And we talked about the poem, so the four of you already know — as I’m about to tell the rest of my Zen readers — that this particular poem came from … yes, you guessed it:  the pages of The Atlantic Monthly.  But guess what?  It was from the online version of The Atlantic Monthly, where right on the Internet you can access it anytime you want — which, obviously, I am highly recommending. 

Why?  Because the writing is divinely intelligent and eclectic — covering politics, fiction, poetry, national and international news, and stuff … lots of stuff!

ie.

• Goodly yummily writing from James Fallows
• Texas Justice Gone Awry
• Famous and Fucked (over, that is)
• 2008 Election — A Perspective
• Fiction, Fiction AND MORE FICTION!
• Google for Dummies
• And, yes, there are PODCASTS
• The Girls:  Hillary and Sarah
• Interview with poet Philip Levine
• Pornography and Us (that would be me and u)

Is that eclectic enough for you?  Are you feeling it?  The deliriously electric thrill of it all? And that is just a teensie-weensie smidgen of what is available.  Read through just a few of the above cutesy-chocolatey links and I bet you fall head-over-heels just like I did on that fine sunny day when I was kinda-sorta under house arrest.  What’s really fun is that you can sign up for a Newsletter,  The Trans-Atlantic (sample newsletter), and know exactly what’s up and where to find it.  Because it’s link love, baby cakes, and with a clickety-click you’ll be right where you want to be.  Or else you can hang out in higher-end waiting rooms and score your very own print version.  I mean, after all, it worked for me.

Oh how I love this magazine and how I love you and how I love the Internet.  (Well, the Internet is more like a love-hate thing, but we’ll leave that can of worms for another day.)

… and yes, boys, I will be asking questions.  So read up!

xo, Angela

it’s the bitch in her ~by Angela

it’s the bitch in her
that keeps you on her dotted line
signed, sealed, delivered
your signature, her hand
done deal

used up and faded blue
the new you
(after all)

after all:
buckled down and tied up
your twisted tongue and caught breath
searching for sonnets

searching for sonnets
on hobbled limbs
and always bended knee
to sing, to plead, to offer alms
to your silent siren
who never listens, never speaks
who only hears her own measure

it’s the bitch in her
that keeps you here and keeps you hers:
her cheap fetish
her pygmy romeo
her corrupt fuck

it’s the bitch in her
that’s taken you down
rubbed you raw
cut you clean
wiped you out
bled you, bled you, bled you

it’s the bitch in her
that fucks with you
fucks you up
fucks you over
and doesn’t give
a flying fuck about any of it

it’s the bitch in her
that has your attention
your cock, your devotion, your heart

it’s the bitch in her
that makes you her bitch

***

What I’m trying to say is that I finally finished moving my FREE erotica blog, Blistered Lips to it’s own Web address and hope you visit often.

The above poem is one of my newest entries and has proven quite popular so far..

***

And…thanks to Mistress V for being the original hostess of Blistered Lips and for being a very good friend.  If you’re a blogging neonate, eager to get your “blogging feet” wet, check out Mistress V’s Vixen Blogs, where you can blog away to your heart’s content at absolutely no cost.  Mistress V even has low-cost hosting plans and will help you transfer to your own domain when you’re ready to upgrade and strike out on your own.  It’s where I got started and look at me now? (No groans from the Peanut Gallery, thank you very much.)

And while you over there, you can still find me–glad to still be hanging out with Mistress V–plugging away at Pardon My French, my collection of sexy quotes.

xo, Angela