Monday, June 7, 2021

BY REQUEST: "The We Who is Me" or "How Trolls are Made"

© Judith Cullen 2021

This is my avatar - Caledonia. This is also me. Some people don't get that concept. My late Mother insisted in referring to Caledonia as if she were something other than me, and it surprised me how much that bothered me. I could not help her to understand. Not everyone who uses an avatar (for whatever purpose) has the same connection that I do. Many of them do. Why would that be?

It's a difficult concept to express. People who know me only in the physical world struggle to understand it - to grasp that the connection is something beyond fantasy. People who met me initially in the virtual world, and then meet my physical self often comment that they see a resemblance.

Friday, April 30, 2021

*NEW POEM* Looking Forward & Asking Questions

Seventy-Two Inches

by Judith Cullen

© 2021

 

Smiling is useless,

a flex beneath

filtering layers

expressing nothing.

Trying the eyes

results in odd

bulging twitches

like transitory gas.

One hundred and

eighty two centimetres,

seventy two inches

of cavernous void.

Our beings long for

rituals of comfort in

a frightening world,

stretching out.

 

Thursday, February 11, 2021

AT LAST! A New Poem


It's been a long dry writing spell ... it's been 2020!  A year reviled, but only distinct in that is seems to have been like poetry - everything distilled into one highly charged season of the unbelievable. 

In the middle of this, my Mom passed. She was 89, and my life with her for the past 7 years had involved a daily consciousness of twilight, and acknowledging the third lurking member of our household - death. I realized my writing had, in so many ways, become about death, and the yearning to let go and move on. 

When the time came, I didn't want to write at all. I wrote a story about the incredible moment of  Mom's passing, and one other story, and that was it.  I did not want to write about death anymore, or about moving on. I just wanted to do it. Ten months later, it's still not that easy. But my pen is ready, and words have been flowing through me. It's time.

The first poem out of the chute has many imperfections, but it is notable for being the first one out after so long a period. I can't help but treasure it just for that. ~ jdc

***

"What is it?"

by Judith Cullen © 2021

 

I

 

Whatever it is,

wakes you at 3am,

the shape-note-word

that taps, taps, taps

on a conscious mind

struggling, blurred.

 

It is still there

merging into traffic,

the hue-key-phrase

a looming presence

on the shoulder of

the morning blaze.

 

It perches on the rim of

your second cup of coffee

a texture-rhythm-meter,

unwilling to leave

till it's a fully realized,

blossoming feature.