Happy New Year

Writing Under the Influence w/Chinese Democracy Accompaniment

I imagine the barrel. Oak. Nestled, cupping the liquid that is now tantalizing with the aroma of smoke, the amber color as it swirls in my glass, its wide rim indulgence as I breathe in deeply. The glass weighted and reassuring in my hand, like my favored coffee cup, an extension of the quietude in which I enjoy consumption; a luxury I have afforded myself on this cusp, the birth of a new year. I have always loved beginnings best, the sense of wonder and awe in discovery. I long to savor these few quiet moments in which I have stoked the fire of introspection, and like tea leaves shook out to be read, I approach this new year with both hope and trepidation, aware that possibility is both light and dark. Still I hunger for the newness of the year, await the pronouncement of the soothsayer. I let the music play. I am gone lost in the strings, words linger and music moves in and out of my consciousness. Sometimes when I turn the sensors off, I see the color of music. Close my eyes to experience its hue, its translucent richness of brazen gold, red mahogany and along the rift of guitar a glint of obsidian. I become a note as I blend with the sound of his voice, and I allow the words to separate from the music and the poetry to linger in my ears and I sense refinement and a beautiful maturity. I return to the image of the barrel, its metal-strapped belly, how with time it tempers the whisky, and I smile. The only sounds, music and the tinkling of ice as I float the glass to my lips.


An Insatiable Desire for Deja'Vu by Bebe Cook available from Flutter Press

Miss Piggy




This is my favorite Christmas present, a gift from my husband, I am calling her Miss Piggy. I can not see her without grinning from ear to ear, without a little smile bubbling up inside of me. She rocks, and my husband rocks for buying her me. We had been grocery shopping at Target (which is not a real grocery store)and we rounded the corner and she was there, I just started smiling, and I told my husband I wanted one for Christmas, and he made that husband sound (the one that generally precedes the husband look). Based on the sound and the look, I figured I would not be getting the Piggy, and I remember telling myself I would come back after Christmas and buy her if she was on-sale. I opened all of my presents and she was in the last box. I saw her; started smiling and well I am still smiling. I am using her to save for a very cool Snoopy for my Michael.

A White Christmas

Christmas Poem 2008

I scan the sky for the Great Bear;
whose tail forms a pouring vessel.

Visible to those who choose
to dwell under northern skies.

Eyes finger its outer rim; search
for Polaris; seek confirmation of identity.

I long to partake of the constancy
of this star like ancient mariners

who navigated the seas from
its unflappable position. I know

that cartographers drew lines from its axis;
scrawled directional symbols on rolled

parchment and divided this world
into quadrants. Yet, under darkness's

blanket on this hallowed eve ,
I think only of the babe

eyes wide in the manger,
gazing upon this same

this bright star;
and am comforted.

I have been backing up my photos and my words, as in all things in my entropic way they are on the electronic equivalent of jots, post-it-notes, written in margins, slips of paper, a bit of aside from the normal business of my day to day life. My PC is sick, very sick, and while I mourn its passing, it might be the kick in the ass I need to create a systematic back-up and to finally move myself from straddling the line between PC/Mac. I love my Mac, but I also love the ability to take the best of both worlds and often find myself dividing my creative pursuits into PC and Mac. I am also lazy in learning all of the options of my Mac software and in a pinch find myself using whatever platform is easiest for me, of taking the path of less resistance. The path of less resistance at times a strength and a character flaw of mine. I love life and loathe conflict, thankfully I have an agreeable personality and find something positive in all things, I save up my energies for those real conflicts, the ones that are important. I had a fantastic week, received good news on two young men that are important to me, my nephew Shane and my godson, Jacob. My nephew Shane passed his GED and now has 6 hours of college credit to his name. He qualified for free tuition at a Community college in Missouri. Shane has had his share of troubles and this news made me smile from ear to ear, and I had to go all proud Aunt Bebe on him and tell all of my closest friends. My godson Jacob is going back to school to finish his high school diploma, and has identified a couple of colleges to begin in the summer. He is a poet and writes the most incredible poems for a 18 year old boy ( here's the proud Aunt Bebe alarm going off again) and he has just seemed lost, as if he was looking for Neverland. I am so proud and excited for him. So I am done going all Aunt Bebe on everyone, today we are going to the Ronald McDonald house to cook for the families, Rachael is going to do crafts with the kids, and read them a Christmas story, maybe decorate a tree with them, she is still working out the details. I made Christmas cookies. I am excited about seeing Jussie's brick, I am going to ask my sister Michelle if she will let me take her toe picture on the brick for my side bar, I will only need Allie's toes to have all four of my sisters. Once again I prattled on.

These photos are some that were lost (meaning I had forgot I had taken them). I have lost poems and drawings too. Though I can keep up with my family and friends. I was looking for a picture I had taken of my sister's hunting ( English Setter not hound) dog Jake, as he has since passed and I wanted to make a portrait to give her husband for Christmas. I was beginning to think I had lost my mind, as I knew I had taken a series of photos last February of Jake when he and I watched the sun come up on her back porch. Jake liked me, he almost always slept on the couch with me when I visited. We spent many mornings sitting on the back porch just tongue and tail wagging. It took me 3 days to find the photos, and when I did I also uncovered a series of photos from New Mexico taken about the same time.

This photos are raw, meaning I have not played with them at all. I took them from the car (I was not driving). I remember watching the movement of shadow, how the clouds consumed the landscape, hovered above the horizon as if they like me wanted only to caress the mountains. I find myself aware and comforted by my own insignificance, a sense of being only a thread in a complex tapestry. A tapestry so vast and perfect that hovers at the edges of my human perceptions. My animal senses just barely comprehends. At times it seems that the filters are lifted and for a blip, a microsecond, I am aware in a broader sense, and I am left breathless.

Postcards

A .



or B ?

The Woman:In a Box



Poems by Susan Culver

I am most fortunate in the poetry communities that I belong to, I think of them a bit as of homes and the other writers as part of my poetic family. I find them safe places where I can in the purest sense the explore craft, interchange ideas with other writers, where I garner inspiration, and often where I stretch my own self in poetic experimentation and most importantly build friendships. As in all things I do, I tend to participate in fits and spurts, mostly dependent on time, but also on my ability to focus, which the last year has been severely fractured. I routinely participate in daily poem challenges at Inside the Writers Studio, where over the last 3 years I have had the incredible pleasure of reading and writing with the most fantastic individuals and poets. Often I get the opportunity to witness the birth of a collected work, a concept of a manuscript in its infancy, and to follow it through its evolution. Sometimes there are poems written that as you read them you know they are important, you hear each individual poem speak, and you know that the set of them are simply brilliant. That the entirety of the collection is such that you know they need to be read, by many, by all. The Woman: In a Box by Susan Culver is such a collection. I was very fortunate to see the birth of this collection and I believe strongly in this work. Susan opted to make this full-length collection free and accessible to all, in her words

I had initially intended to publish this work in print format, as I have done with my previous collections. However, given the current world we find ourselves a part of, I felt that this collection was best shared in a free and accessible format.

It remains as living things remain: a work in progress.

You can read the gift of Susan's collection at

The Woman: In a Box

Today I am lunch-time blogging from the cafe on the 5th floor of my building, where they are piping in Dean Martin singing Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and where I am trying to find a quick minute to celebrate the life of someone who came after me and left before his time. Today is the 5th anniversary of the death of my nephew Jussie, but I am not sad today, I am full of joy for having been given the chance to have him in my life, for being his gooberish Aunt Bebe, with the brightly flowered pants. Yesterday the Ronald McDonald House of Dallas opened at new house, and in the path around the playground is this stone, my sister emailed me this photo this morning and I was filled with such a rush of love, a flood of Jussie's stories, I smiled. This week I have been in New Mexico at a Tribal Summit, and I found myself in conversation with a friend whose close friend is dying of cancer, and he seemed at a loss of what to say to his friend. I found myself remembering a conversation with Justin, a conversation where he told me the thing that he missed most when he was diagnosed with leukemia was the everyday interactions, the joking, the teasing, the football games, simply being treated as himself, and not the boy with the leukemia. How this admission from a 15 year old boy touched me and profoundly changed the way I reach out to others who are sick, no longer in shocked sadness but instead I strive to make a real human connection. Cancer sucks. It's not fair. It makes no sense what so ever. It simply is and no matter how hard we wish, sometimes it takes those we love and we grieve. We grieve always, and when we are damn lucky, we remember in love. I reached out to my friend and I said, what I learned from my nephew, was that what is most important is to just be there, treat your friend the way you always did and let him know that he counted. Jussie you are missed, you counted and today I wore a really obnoxious outfit, just for you.