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.

 

Friday, May 15, 2020

DREAMING DIFFERENT: A Short Story

The Isle of Shadows - Fantasy Faire (SL) 2020
Dreaming Different
by Judith Cullen
© 2020 

A gentle creak as the door opens, finding a light that should not be on, and a small head which should be asleep - her face turned up in surprise. 

"Mommy!"

"Hey there. What are you doing up, little one?"

The bed sighs with the added weight as two dark, curly heads come together. Two pairs of brown eyes, so much alike, gaze at each other with love and concern.

"I had a dream"

"Oh Honey, I'm so sorry."

Saturday, May 9, 2020

WHEN IT IS TIME: A Short Story



NOTE: You can now hear me reading this story on MixCloud

When It Is Time
by Caledonia Skytower
© 2020 

In memory of Elizabeth Cullen

Time. Time. I wanted more time.

She cradled in my hands: fragile, imperfect, diminishing.  

Her bubble of being had once encompassed a broad sphere. At some point she became the object of my life, rather than its influence. In the fullness of time she began to shrink, her focus narrowed, her view spare.  

As with such certainties, it's easy to ascribe them to an undefined future: the inevitable that will happen in some comfortably vague tomorrow. I held her as delicately as I could, aware of the looming presence of that inevitability. It was time, and I wanted more of it.

Friday, May 8, 2020

SOMETHING FUN: A Rhyme!

So in the midst of everything out pops this poem, inspired by a childhood rhyming game.A bit of fun and relief thanks to two fairy sprites on the region of Lunafae at Fantasy Faire SL in support of Relay for Life and the American Cancer Society.

Fairy Vari-Ation
by Judith Cullen
© 2020 

I see you Fae-mate
*clap, clap*
Come flit and fly with me
The moon is bright and free
It shines for all of we
Splash down the rain wash
around the pebbled shore
and we'll be fairy friends
for ever more
*clap*
more
*clap, clap*
more, more.

Thursday, May 7, 2020

SEEKING COMPANY - A Short Story



NOTE: You can now hear me reading this story on MixCloud

Seeking Company
by Judith Cullen
© 2020 
                   
"Is this seat taken?"

I dropped to the rough wooden planks without waiting for an answer.  I knew better than to believe the voices that mutter in the gloom of 3 am; the wolves that lurk in the dark beyond the edge of your bed, or under it, their panting breath summoning every doubt and fear from the hidden depths inside you. Their province is the pitch where "false" and "true" are hard to distinguish. 

I escaped outside to a land that was gloom itself, which perfectly matched my mood.  At least I'd left the wolves to gnaw and shred the blankets, while I sought what air and light I could. There was precious little of that - a weak moon and a greenish glowing of perpetual pre-dawn. A trio of skeletons sat at the end of a forbidden pier, fishing lines ending empty above the brown muck of the water. One was drinking. I could sympathize.  They seemed like company, albeit undemanding company, frozen in the timeless moments of their demise.

I wasn't expecting a reply. Imagine the surprise when one of them spoke.