A BROKEN NEW YEAR

Looking out at a discordant world, full of

fury, full of wonder, full of enchantment,

full of possibility, full of flitting dream,

it is discordant but for a purpose. To be

discovered as a disheveled character in a

Charles Bukowski poem but really one

whom is ready to take a spin with the devil

and shout out that all is A-OK.

I'm full of ferocity as I start the new year, one

of the lucky people who survived the infidel

that invisibly torched our lives, the will to fight overcoming

the tiredness of our daily lives, circling the wagons,

with closed-in, monochromatic focus on

all that we have to do to stay away, guard our

stratified existence, be apart to stay alive, but guardedness

only goes so far to explain how we act, for we

crave the discord, the purpose that comes from

our lives disheveled but unused in present tense.

I look at a world that is still here, that is welcoming

to a covering of snow enveloping the grass

with green peeking through, a new day is

rising and we are still here, ready to do what

we must to stay alive and slice through the

monochromatic world that has made our lives

a tired circle of hell that we can't escape, except

in our fantasies of cleanliness and community.

We have been made still by the frost, by the covering

of a virus on our lives that has kept us inside and

out of the path of fear, but we are not broken,

for a new year of promise, opportunities, potentiality

and of a society once again made whole is imminent.

I drink my tea in silence, look out the window at the

white fluff at the base of a tree, climbing up the bark,

and wonder what all the bother is about.