SUPER STAMP SUNDAY: JANIS JOPLIN

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Okay, here we go: The first official SUPER STAMP SUNDAY post! Did you guess (thanks to my previous post) that Janis Joplin would finally go postal in late 2014? I'm gonna buy the really cool FDC (First Day Cover) for sure.

I'm thinking it might be sort of awesome to include a little haiku moment with the postal one. So here's something I wrote about Janis a year or two ago? It's not perfect (syllable count totally sucks), but it pretty much sums up how I feel about this great singer:

LITTLE GIRL BLUE

So large on the stage
Her voice like thunder and rain
Little girl blue so alone

P.S. I'm still adjusting to the time change, so I'm sleepy/lazy as hell. I need more coffee big time. See you next week - when I'm actually wide awake!

SUPER STAMP SUNDAY (HALLOWEEN)

I know it's not Sunday, but I couldn't resist posting this really cool US postage stamp from the Classic Hollywood Monsters series (first issued by the U.S. Postal Service in 1997) just in time for Halloween.

There were five monsters to choose from: Dracula, The Wolf Man, The Mummy, The Phantom of the Opera, and Frankenstein's Monster.

Anybody still remember the days when the cost of a postage stamp was just 32 cents, and snail mail had not yet become a thing of the past? Oh well at least most folks still send out their Christmas cards the old fashioned way. Plus the utility bills never stop coming.

I'd best hurry up and grab a pumpkin at the grocery store before it's too late. There were only a few sad and neglected looking ones left at Safeway (last time I checked). But rumor has it that there's still plenty of fresh pumpkins on sale at Fred Meyer, so I'm gonna go for it. Hope you have a Spooktacular Halloween!

P.S. I'm officially launching my Super Stamp Sunday posts on November 2nd, so if you are a lover of U.S. postage stamps (or just curious as hell) be on the lookout. Can you figure out (no help from Google) which awesome rock star from the late 1960s is finally going postal? Here's a little haiku hint for you:

PIECE OF HER HEART

Afraid and lonely
A wallflower from Texas
Bloomed into a rose

Haiku © 2014 by Dylan Mitchell 

STREETS OF FIRE

(for Rodney King)

Home is Hell's
hatred and heat

When battered
blackness boils

the blood
The smoldering

streets smoke
and burn

White men preach
prayers for peace

Poem © 2014 by Dylan Mitchell

COMING HOME

He stood at the window
most nights. An old
man with soft white
hair, and a smiling
face. His bright blue
eyes shone like rare
lamps on a dark day.

Coming home,
not a star in the
sky, if I felt a little
lost, or battered by
the world: I'd often
lift my eyes up to
the 3rd floor, and
hope to find him
there. That familiar
gay man in the
window: with his
wise white hair,
and Zen-like face.

A bright light in the
pitch black night.
To tell me who
I am. To see me
safely home.

Poem © 2014 by Dylan Mitchell

Maya Angelou: 1928 - 2014

STILL I RISE

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

- Maya Angelou