Paul,

I love the winter chill. I love the winter trees, the snow, the grey, and the migration of the birds. However, I do not like black ice, and the thought of people living 'without' shelter, heat, and employment.

Poetry, like music, is full of color. I like to paint in harmony, but I also like to paint in the surreal, and dark chords of clashing notes.

I am a social being that has adapted to the world I live in. There is a great loneliness in understanding what ails us.

Like many, the creative sort, I linger in the thoughts of how to, rather than when will they?

I wrote this dark melody in sharps and flats against a melody of love. I wrote it with the percussive strokes of my fingers, and the tempest of reality that hits like an uninvited "Sandy".

I fear I am a mere mortal that cannot paint us out of our desperate times. I believe, 'with all my heart', that God's will teaches us what we need to know along our way. I have been in America's classrooms, future. I have witnessed the weapon of mass destruction that is robbing souls and hearts as we write.

To wake up every morning with the realization that teachers are losing jobs in my America; to wake up every morning with the realization that we are fighting to survive, is pretty harsh. America is walking the rails and the train is coming. I feel the vibration, and so do you ... across the sea.

It is hard to turn the page when one knows that the chapters of one's life are unfolding like quicksand.

So many are still losing their jobs and like me, so many teachers are forced into entry level work that will never pay their way.

I am not hitting the alarm button. I cannot stop what our world has done in a mere poem. I have grown to feel the peace in the darkest movements of my life, but you are right ... we need to take action.

I am not unhappy, but I am discontent. Happiness is a joy that fills many a broken child.

I am not angry, but I am bound with a code of ethics that wants to bloom in the desert.

I fell into these notes and played them. I did not play the wrong notes, I played what I heard in my wilderness.

People are faking it to make it. Our government is faking it to make it. Many of our Churches are faking it to make it. And our children have learned the game of political and fashionable mumbo jumbo to make it.

Why do we still have credit cards when our economy is bleeding us to death? ... Oh, that's right ... interests ... the interests of a few ... at the destruction of the masses, a world's economy.

I love fashion, and I love the theatre, but I do not love the pretense that teaches our children that designer clothes complete them. I do not like the dishonest competition that complicates pharmaceuticals with generic brands that may or may not compare to the original formulation.

I need a round table. I need the company of knights. I am growing older but I am not weaker ... as a matter of fact ... I am stronger.

I have not lost the yellow, I have just lost the mellow. A grain of wheat must die to germinate. I can't help myself ... I write what I feel ... and what I have learned along the way.

I, for one, suffer the consequences of not faking it until I make it ... it is ... and never will be ... my nature.

You have tasted the bittersweet of my life, and like chocolate, it may have the ability to fight toxins.

Oh, how I ramble. Thanks for feeling my thoughts ... this is what I love about YOU.

Love,

Kathy

Dallas, Texas

I have every intention to make 2013 a God year.