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  • A New Poem: “Street Car, Sweet Heart, Sweat Hard”

    I love your Spanish talk.
    The soft ground around you
    Hovers as you walk.
    Chinese flowers grow out of me
    like dreams lifted under a bed
    of yellow Lantana and grapewood rosevine.
    Midnight and a sleep walking Sun
    dip its claws into the milky Moon.

    She blows a serenade and makes a note in her diary: March 14th;
    Or was it the other day when we played through the woods in the synagogue’s court?
    I kept my diary clear
    with liquor? hidden there.

    All those cars have resisted, and those children inside us have died,
    but the moist oil still grasps at the roots of the darkened cells.
    (It’s old, and the unmarried couple inside still snuggle closely to the foot of her screaming limb.)

    Once a bold, minted Moon?struck the head like a bell and turned us red,
    And the merry men of the next town whistled “Dixie” all the way down
    to the smoothed River’s bed.

    A maestro, that dark little secret, always dancing and standing still.
    (She, seh, was the dear. May we call you dear? Take our collective blue beard hand.)

    Governor rubs the chocolate chip lips of white faces that read: “never washed hair.”
    Steers calling sisters for dates and the narrow alley was our field with its
    one chilling little blade.

    All the sorcerers were baked
    Inside a street lit with humiliating desire.
    That moment never turned or backed up when the future,
    blinded, uncaring, unknowingly,
    decided to run us over.

    Someday they will tell me she still lives there,
    every soaked board still crying, trying to pull out the rusty nails
    of the last conversation made,
    and yet, still, even with all the talk,
    That she is never at home.

  • A New Poem: Sonnet #2 “Sunfather”

    Sunfather

    Red Wave Petunias shower over clay,
    All things can open up and show their light.
    A life becomes transparent in warm May.
    Transparent to transcendence born from night.

    Their eyes the leaves foam into greening smiles
    to Father Sun and Mother Sea of dream.
    They feel the music, sibling Wind breathes miles
    through body, bread and crown beneath the stream.

    It is the night of meeting ringing gold
    that dance and sing in drippings of the womb.
    A rushing waterfall that drapes us cold.
    Our salmon hearts dive in the unseen room.

    We sprang out from the sea by silent sounds,
    And fire ringed God’s swung open spirits’ clouds.

    © 2007/2009 Stephen Pickering

    (there still will be a bunch of iteration to do on this one. I finished it, not hurriedly, but in one sitting because of the importance of composition.)

  • How to Put a Cool, Interactive, Real-Time FriendFeed Widget on Your Website

    I got this idea when I first saw Scoble's website and his subsequent Building43 site where in each case the FriendFeed widget is much cooler than the one they give you at FriendFeed (even the Java one) in the sense that it behaves just like the site does, inline videos play within the widget, comments stream in real time to the widget and can be made inside the widget. With the generic widget they give you at FriendFeed, it is static. In other words you have to refresh the page to get the updated content, and when you click content, be it a comment or a video, it takes you away from your blog or page and to the FriendFeed page. No Fun. This is Fun. This is interactive and "breathes" "pulsates" which is one of the main themes we are hitting on for Web 2010. No matter what business you are in, you want a site that encourages people to not only be there but to interact with you. Basically it comes down to this: They've got the same stuff down the street. The customer has 4 or 5 choices. The business that is more FUN, the nicest, that Woos and Schmoozes is usually, all things being equal, going to get a greater share of the business. Is a more interactive, "cooler" FriendFeed widget woooing and schmoozing? Not really. But its better than thte static one. It shows that you are trying. And customers can sense that, and sense that you are "into" what you are doing, and will tend to gravitate towards you. <iframe src="http://friendfeed.com/stephenpickering/embed?css=http://stephenpickering.com/wp-content/themes/ocean-mist-2_0/friendfeed-styles.css%3fv=17" frameborder="0" height="1400" width="310" style="border:1px solid #aaa"></iframe> Obviously change the credentials to your own (these are mine showing), and if you are a WordPress user don't forget to add the specific CSS theme you are using so it will look right. And obviously the size to fit your sidebar or whatever.

  • Zuckerberg Interview from Building43.com

    Building43.com is a great site, maybe the best site, if you are interested in Social Media in general and specifically the nexus of Social Media and Main Street, “everyday” businesses. In other words how to use the web and all these great tools to enhance and build your existing brick and mortar type business, to bring it into 2009 and engage and benefit from the new “Trust” economy.

    They just launched last Friday with 7 new videos that I all highly recommend watching, but the premier one is this one with, of course, the co-founder and chief of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg.

  • Sonnet #1

    "Untitled" by Ruza Bagaric
    "Untitled" by Ruza Bagaric

    (*I figured if Shakespeare can write a hundred than I can too.)

    Sonnet #1

    I loved the girl who lived next door to me.
    Her eyes were blue and clear and sang with joy.
    She was the sun, the grass, the trees, and stream.
    Her hair was blond and bobbed just like a boy.
    Then something happened or was it just fate?
    The summer ended and the snow began to fall.
    The Garden froze and ice locked up her gate.
    Kid’s icy jeers piled up the labyrinth’s wall.
    The schools and churches crammed our time of play.
    We boys formed clubs; girls spoke in secret codes.
    The flowers froze; exuberant dancing went away,
    And natural feelings morphed to vaudeville shows.

    The dragon stole the treasures of our life.
    Until you lift her veil, her love will die.

    © 2008 Stephen Pickering

  • The Best Netbook on the Market Today

    Asus Eee PC 1008HA Seashell