The Bash A Smash

The birthday bash was a big success...Wine, women, songs and cigarettes. Hah! The men were there too, thankfully, and provided much needed entertainment. Not much time right now to go into the details but it was a great evening and I am grateful for my friends...my real treasures.

There was a slightly sad note and someone out there forgot my birthday...someone, you know who you are...who should have celebrated the day with me and not a word, a card, an email. I know you are busy, but damn, it was my BIRTHDAY!!! And I never forget yours, never for I was there... (Get over it Soo! Hah!)

I have a killer schedule coming up (I hope it doesn't really kill me) and my posts here may be few and far between. Starting next weekend with Aspenfest in Ruidoso, I have shows almost every weekend until January...then I get a long, three month break, except for the bead show in Tucson *and that ain't work!* so hang in there kiddies and folkies, I will be back or have a broken back or something...

As many of you know, I love to write and I am a regular on many writer forums, in fact, I may even have a 'reputation' Gasp! I write poetry, haiku (more than poetry) and short stories. Here is a poem I wrote yesterday:

PUT ANOTHER BUFFALO IN THE JUKEBOX BABY

sometimes the silence between the words is all i can hear
deaf to pleas, done with conversations, digging
holes in spaces, writing these dots...connecting dots, collecting
dots...

i am going to be one of those old women that you see in
outlandish clothing, polished like glass, fragile but tempered.
o that temper, that temper! when you pass, you will say,
"look at her, she must be crazy" in a polite whisper...

there is no thing polite about me except "howdy", and a
warm touch, a snort when i laugh, loud enough to frighten
my own children, i peel you back and look interior... a view,
an intuition, a psychic vision...and if you venture closer...

claws in one hand, hardly trimmed, but poised...sometimes
a fist, a hammer, a rock hard slap in the face that hurts you where
you hide out...then a touch, a soothing word, an apology that is
carried in my bag, a tissue for you to blow it out on the other
hand...

i will be one of those old crones that smiles when you question, nod my head agreeable, mirror and shapeshift to your face, your mask that lies *liar!* in front of me. you may see, you may see me, that old and still beautiful woman who smiles when you question...

saturn, the old man *very old man* takes a stroll with me, he is ringed, bejeweled, and passing out chickens like cigars to all the houses on my block...naked saturn, with hula hoop frown, lives in the 9th house on the block...he'll stay awhile, a guest that runs around in his birthday suit...flashing me as he passes...dirty old man...revealing all...

and another milestone passes on the road, this long windy, pock-marked, rocky road with a view that would stagger anyone by it's very lucidity...a cormorant flew over me, escaped from japanese fishing village only to view the rio grande...double rainbows, twins, before my day, crossed the mountains...i see...i sea...Susan Elizabeth Appleby...SEA, see?

i want, or should i say, i desire (cannot escape the desire, nor do i want to, yet) him still, he who suffers the slings, the arrows, the darted looks, the lidded eyes, aye, him, the thing, the one i most cherish and love must suffer with me...for we suffer the most the ones we love...

when i get old, older, i will dwell in dreams, live in light, that woman you pass on the street, whisper, "she must be crazy, look at her eyes...she must be..."


SooZen
9-26-2004
day after...

Here is a piece I recently sold (yippee!), vintage german glass beads, india glass, copper beads, and czech glass and crystal, lampwork pendant by Marco Marcus (17 years old at the time).