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Floating on a rhythmic sound,
wordless notes making air profound.
Melodies and cords can confound
lonely souls caught in their surround.
A simple honesty I've found
within each beat so slyly wound
in passion's tether; wrapped around
liquid music in which I've drowned.

Such joy to feel my body dance.
Every beat creates a chance
to redirect some age old trance
that claims each year another lance
and calls its victims happenstance,
but never gives a second glance
when lonesome hearts find resonance
within their own subdued romance.

My molten heart beats out its wound,
supporting life still too untuned.
Daring rhythms have me marooned
within a truth I've not assumed.
Why do I feel myself so doomed
if I must live my life resumed
now I have witnessed tones untombed
and wilted melodies regroomed?

Music frees a soul caught by blue
and helps it see the world more true.
I want to play along with you
no matter what you're going through
the way that good friends often do;
perhaps discover something new
like how to catch the morning dew,
a magic drink said to renew.

I'm tired of dealing in words.
I have been making them my swords,
within a house of falling cards,
with no future to move towards.
I want to leave behind the hoards
who keep declaring their own lords.
I want to forfeit all rewards
and find release within your cords.

Echoes return from unknown ends,
a secret mystery time defends;
still what we hear often depends
on what our hidden past contends.
We live our lives as fear commends.
Our thoughts get locked inside our trends.
We strain out sounds until life lends
some credence to what logic sends.

Some pay one thousand for a frock,
yet never sweep their own front walk.
They crave a life without tick tock;
all fighting over private rock.
I want to dance beyond the talk,
and take a chance beyond the squawk,
reorganize the human flock
to recognize a fledgling hawk.

Ego is hard to understand.
Each lonely world caught up in sand,
endless currents and complex strand
fearing new routes that find no land,
and feeding truths that sometimes band
within illusions darkest hand.
I crave a life much more unmanned
to challenge what my past holds grand.

Every so often we meet
a person who fills us with heat;
we sense rhythms we can't repeat
and inspirations they complete;
that's when we crave our lives more neat,
please bring our visions to our feet;
but life's no ordinary treat,
containing pains all too concrete.

I've writ until the final strain.
I'm not quite sure what thoughts remain.
I'm never sure what poems gain,
yet still I love their lost refrain.
I know they've taught me to retrain
my thoughts to feed on living grain.
I hope that humans can live sane.
Life's dance a salve to sooth their pain.

Copyright: Lynn Marie Sager 2007

Lynn Sager has toured over two-dozen countries and worked on three continents. Author of A River Worth Riding: Fourteen Rules for Navigating Life, Lynn currently lives in California; where she fills her time with private coaching, public speaking, and teaching writing for the LACCD and Pierce College. To read more about how to Navigating Life, visit her website at http://www.navigatinglife.org/ To read more of Lynn's poetry, visit http://navigatinglifepoetscorner.blogspot.com/

It's nice to be able to walk into a store and buy exactly what you want, when you want. However, with some products that isn't always the case. Specialty items like gourmet foods, regional delights, and organic health and beauty aids might not always be readily available at your local grocer. Those handmade crafts and dolls you admired on a recent trip to the country, too, more likely not be found at Wal-Mart. So what do you do? If you want more, you go to the Internet to find it.

More and more, businesses turn to the Internet as a means of increasing customer base and global brand awareness. Consumers, too, turn to major shopping portals and smaller, specialized stores for unique items and gifts. If you have something to sell, but don't have it in your budget to distribute through major department stores, an online boutique and shopping cart provides an affordable solution.

If and when you do decide to set up an online business, you want to be certain you have all the proper elements needed to succeed. As you shop for a designer or web hosting, take care to note the following essentials for your store:

Custom Storefront Design - If you have an existing color scheme and branding for your retail business, make sure a designer can integrate your logos seamlessly into an attractive storefront template. Logos and graphics should also be updated to celebrate your store's emergence as a virtual storefront, satisfying regular customers and drawing in new ones.

Your front page is also your big sell page, what attracts buyers to the product. Highlight what you sell with crisp photos and detailed description, making point of sale links easy to find.

Search and Structure - Your store should offers categories and subcategories for products, allowing you to set products to multiple categories and increase their visibility. Look for shopping cart software that will allow you to automatically create category pages with ease, and give customers search functions to find what they want without having to browse extensively. Side navigation menus offer the user easy access to your entire inventory, so be sure to offer them.

Individual Inventory Pages - Showcase each item in stock with its own web page. Offer an extended image gallery for displaying color and size options, and allow customers to submit reviews. Individual pages may also allow for sections to display similar items for products that come in a set, so you are continuously selling to your customers. Look for a shopping cart software that allows for "smart URL" functionality, too; unlike other online carts where the item URL is an endless string of jumbles and suffixes, each item in your store gets a unique URL for easy off-site linking. Great for affiliates!

Discounts, Gift Certificates, Coupons - Just one click of the mouse allows business owners to set closeout prices on any item in their stores. Find a program that lets you set special promotional codes for newsletter subscribers, offer buy one, get one free incentives, sell gift certificates and accept coupons online.

Customer Database - Keep track of customers. Use a software that records information on all customers, so you can create opt-in newsletters and direct mail promotions. Offer incentive coupons and sales for returning customers with ease.

Affiliate Programs - Turn customers into salespeople by offering an affiliate program through your online store! Affiliate marketing counts for a large number of Internet retail sales; website owners act as third-party e-tailers and receive commissions for every sale made through their own sites (Amazon.com Associates is an excellent example). With the right software, you can customize your own affiliate program and allow other webmasters to sell your products for you. You pay a small percentage per sale, and in return your brand visibility and link popularity explodes!

To be a good salesman, you must first be a good shopper. Find the proper software to meet your e-commerce needs - user-friendly and functional, and compatible over many browsers - to help your online business succeed.

Kathryn Lively is a freelance writer and SEO consultant who works for CINIVA Systems, a provider of e-commerce solutions for businesses. She also lends her e-commerce skills to FlowCushion, the ergonomic seat cushion for travel, and AcaiGogo, an acai drink mix company.

A water feature placed strategically in a landscape or garden provides a dynamic element to what is usually a static design. Water elements provide tranquility and a sense of calm. The sound and visual effects provided by flowing water are known for their soothing and stress relieving qualities. As a side benefit water features have been known to increase property values by as much as 10%.

Water features can be as simplistic as a statue acting as a fountain to highly complex designs that mimic natural features with multiple terraces and water cascading over a rock bed. Water flow can be slow or swift, with the feature used as a background or as the predominant design element. Only your imagination and budget control the final appearance.

Attract wildlife, from an abundance of birds to squirrels and chipmunks and depending on the location of your property larger animals such as deer. Depending on your climate adding fish to ponds and streams enhances the overall water feature.

The addition of a water feature allows you to dramatically expand the types of plants and flora that can be incorporated into your landscaping.

Many individuals hesitate when considering adding a water feature because of they feel that they are complex to install and require a great deal of maintenance. The complexity of the installation is relative to how dramatic the water feature is and the level of maintenance is relative to the initial investment in the quality of the pumping, aeration and filtration equipment installed.

In the past it was necessary to buy numerous components for your water feature and hope that all the different pieces of equipment were compatible with one another. Now many manufactures are supplying complete kits that contain all of the necessary pumps, filters, aerators, piping and connectors to ensure that all of the pieces of hardware work in conjunction with one another.

Once you have determined that you are going to install a water feature within your landscaping check with your municipal building department for any special requirements and if a permit is required. Remember that water features are difficult to relocate and usually expensive to modify. Planning is the key to success.

For additional information on landscaping your home or other renovation projects, visit Renovation Headquarters.