1. FloydFest Vest 2. Where’s Waldo? 3. Is it live or is it Memorex? 4. Predicting the best yet FloydFest 5. Bowled over 6. Yielding to gravity (AKA Floydfest rest) 7. Look what found its way center stage during a “Railroad Earth” set. 8. Look closer. This is what it’s all about. (Read more on [...]
At first it seemed that my husband Joe had fallen under the seduction of a mistress. Since he took on the task of coordinating on-site parking for FloydFest ‘07, I hadn’t seen him in days. For the past five years, he’s volunteered his time in exchange for a weekend pass, but this year, as the [...]
Seems you can go anywhere on the grounds of FloydFest with a sparkly pink performer’s wrist band, even to the hospitality tent for a complimentary beer on tap. And if your husband is organizing the parking at the festival you’re likely to get a decent parking place and maybe a ride in a golf cart. [...]
1. There’s something contagious going around Floyd that makes poets write poems about Peter Pan. So far there are five poems with this theme written by five different poets who are scheduled to read them at the café bus at Floyd Fest this weekend. Also, OUTLOUD, the woman’s poetry collective I’m a member of, will [...]
In between checking out the paint color in the newly painted Hotel Floyd Writer’s Room and riding up and down Floyd’s windy back roads with my gas tank on empty on the way to visit an artist whose work we want to use in the room, I’ve been harvesting beans, cleaning the dirt off of [...]
Bye-bye, Miss American pie … Drove my chevy to the levee … but the levee was dry … I picked up the CERC Museletter mail at our local post office, dropped it on the front seat of my car, glanced over to it while turning the key in the ignition, and noticed the front page [...]
Does his hair curl in loops luring you close like a crooked finger gestures, “Come here?” Do rainbows reflect off their wispy black sweeps? Do your cells speak emphatically, “YES?” A murmur or whimper freeing itself from seemingly nowhere breaks into bold laughter You speak in tongues like a contented cat Sigh and stretch as [...]
“The word ‘cicada,’ for example, stops me in my tracks. Sorry, I simply cannot continue.” ~ Billy Collins on choosing poems for a poetry anthology. Colleen: If I put a blank on a double letter score and a blank is worth nothing, how many points is that? Mara: Nothing Colleen: But is it twice as [...]
And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ~ Anais Nin 1. Start Here 2. Come in close 3. Watch it change 4. Frame by frame 5. I bet it can make you smile. I’ve always been fascinated [...]
1. I’m an avid follower of world news, but not lately. The Bush presidency is like a bad movie that’s being drawn out even though many of us saw right through the plot from the start. I wish I could hit fast forward or rewind. 2. If your answering machine message says this: “Speak in [...]
As I search the bowl of blueberries for the bluest black ones … I remember 4 and 20 blackbirds baked in a pie … and my son arranging battles between blueberries and grapes … The blueberries always lost because he ate them … ~ From “A Blueberry Pie” by Colleen I left Virginia for my [...]
This I know: If you’re in your twenties and you think nothing of spending a couple hours working on a few lines of a poem, if you do that consistently day after day, it’s bound to lead somewhere. If you spend time developing whatever it is you’re compelled to do, it will eventually come to [...]
I am from Hail Mary full of grapes … midnight mass and pennies in the poor box … I’m from the unlucky luck of the Irish … the Old Sod and Southie before there were gangsters … Excerpt from “Where I’m From” by Colleen One of my goals for my recent trip home to Massachusetts [...]
Hold on to your hat and Click HERE for my video contribution to the Sunday Scribblings subject of HAIR starring me and my sister Sherry.
The poem stops here The writer concedes She has written herself into a corner in a page of pawns and flawed rhymes There will be no final word to move you Post notes: Sometimes when writing poetry, cutting and editing and moving stanza lines around, a stalemate can occur. The above poem was a byproduct [...]
1. Number 90 on my “100 Things about Me” says, “My energy is like a ball I’m trying to keep up. If it falls it stays down for a while.” 2. On my first day home after my twelve day trip to visit my family on Massachusetts coast, I didn’t have the strength to [...]
The airplanes taking off from Boston’s Logan Airport sound like faraway thunder. But the sun is out. I can see it in between clouds reflected on the glassy wet shore where I walk with my head down. Avoiding its hazy hot glare, I step on the cool floating cumulus fluff and forget for a moment [...]
In the last twelve days I’ve eaten Italian food in the North End of Boston, walked the alphabet streets of South Boston where my grandparents met and my father was born, and toured the forts on Castle Island with a tour guide who flirted with me. I took a five hour boat ride, saw seven [...]
