Ingredients:

Roasted chicken carcass from yesterday’s dinner, including fat from bottom of pan

Beef bits from Sunday’s pot roast

Fistful of small onions, peeled and sliced

3 or 4 seeded, sliced jalapenos

2 tablespoons minced garlic

Maybe some red, yellow or orange peppers for color, diced

1 large can Brooks Hot Chili Beans

2 cups of assorted dried beans, washed, soaked and cooked: kidney, chili, navy, pinto, black, etc.

1 large can of diced tomatoes

1 bottle Zing Zang Bloody Mary Mix – don’t add the whole bottle; use to taste

Prep:

In a large Dutch-Oven-type pot, sauté onions, jalapenos and garlic (and peppers) in the chicken fat (left over from the bottom of the pan that the chicken was cooked in).

Add the cooked chicken bits (discard bones) from the carcass; add the cooked beef bits (mine happened to be chipotle-seasoned). Stir a bit to coat the meat with the chicken fat.

Add the Brooks Hot Chili Beans and the prepared assorted beans plus the can of diced tomatoes. Gradually add Zing Zang to taste (I used almost half a bottle).

Bring to boil then simmer. If you can’t watch the burner, turn it off after having brought to a boil, cover, and let the contained heat do the cooking. Or, put it all in a crockpot. Add more Zing Zang or water a douse of beer if the chili is too thick.

Eat:

Serve with crackers, corn bread and cheddar cheese.

Enjoy!

There’s a lake in Michigan – Murray Lake – that’s shaped like a horseshoe, which is lucky, right?

My uncle, stubborn Dutchman and union rallyer, taught me to waterski on that lake.

Tiparillo in his teeth, he took off from the raft, slalom. I took off in the water, wooden skis bobbing. The yellow umbilical cord snaked along the water’s silky surface all the way to the little speedboat.

“Ready?” Uncle Dominic throated.

I gave a tiny thumbs up.

The rope yanked. My knuckles clenched and knees buckled.

The pike and pan fish: “What the hell?! Stand up!” …

“Stand up!” Uncle Dominic garbled.

I let go. The skis had already ditched me.

I surfaced and saw the little speedboat circling ’round. Uncle Dominic coasted into the silver water, neatly ending up beside me. His Tiparillo glowed and the descending sun left a swath of glimmer on the lake that still smacks of heaven.

“Let’s try our luck again.”

Sometimes you meet poetry in unlikely places – like Joe’s Bar on Stocking in NW GR.

Amber's poem

Cuckold the world and escape the scope, but still the world’s a stage for
Every One sees what they want to see, hears what they want to hear
Lies what they want to lie
Every One
Brash, brassy
Robbing
Identities creating illusions
Taking the Joneses’ and trying it on as their own. It’s easier,
You know,
To tear down a mountain than to build one up.
Interred in rubbish, it must be suffocating, this makeshift reality.
Naturally, “I wouldn’t know.” Wink wink.
Already – or, is it about time? – I’m tired of it. This
Vocation. This possession of Self.

Close my eyes and just write just see what flows I want to talk about a beautiful day where I’m falling falling but it’s okay I know sleep will come and it’s just a matter of time (or is it a choice?) before Self gives way to unSelf? A beautiful day and I can smell the roses, really, and the wheat, it ripples, a swing unfurls from the sky and I fly.
Fly.

I’m not sure why I gravitate toward poetry. I guess because I like spare in my words. In my words, I like clarity. In my words. But in my thoughts and deeds indeed clutter runs amok so I go knocking over chairs and cursing mirrors in what I am called to do. I ask the heavens to make it as simple as a single word on a page. Be. Do. Think. Feel. Love. Can the clarity of one’s life be encapsulated in a one-word Mission Statement?

I’ve always found them silly, corporate, until today I find myself at a crossroads

Winter wind strand of pearls

Promises broken and summers forsaken

The silence grows

Brooding, alone.

One by one, those pearls spill forth

Scatter on a silver lake

And roll to the ends of the earth.

I’m left holding the solitary strand

Just a string

A something that once meant something.

As I go to clasp it in my hand

Winter wind grabs that

Last remnant

And pulls it away.

I walk home across the diamond land.

And on this first night of spring

After the equinox, yes,

But when that scent first fills the air

And we’re on the verge of verdant

An inauguration of sweet ecstasy

There it is, yes,

The moss, yes,

The crocus pushing through

March into April.

You’re such a tease, a caress.

But we’ll take it.

We’ll take all of it.

We breathe deeply for the first time in months

And it doesn’t hurt.

And when I call your name, spring,

It echoes in the air, illuminates the night

And on the dawn, well,

A new year is born.

The farmer pushes the seed in the ground, pushes,

But don’t get ahead of yourself, farmer,

Sowing and plotting.

Take spring for the soft rain

For the clotted mud

For the clouded mind

For the cup of wine.

We take with the caveat that we give.

And in the spring

On this first night of spring

Close your eyes, clench your fists, your breath, then

Release, face and palms raised up to the Heavens, exhale,

And let the clean rain, yes,

Let the unadulterated rain

The breaking-no-commandment rain

“And it was good,” rain,

Anoint you, favored son.