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.