It is safe to say everyone will be a year older at this time next year. That may be the only thing we can all agree upon.
The chasm between the congregation of the lost and those who agree with me is wider than my eleven and a half triple E shoe size, wider than a pastrami sandwich at Langer’s Deli and longer than Pinocchio’s lying nose on Donald's face, invisible to MAGA eyes.
January is well-named with its provenance being the Roman
god, Janus, that two-face figure, looking both back and ahead. It symbolizes
transition as our democracy teeters on the precipice.
Auld Lang Syne and bring it on. So Long, It’s Been Good to Know
You and what else have you got? I Don’t Know Why You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello.
If you think 2023 was terrifying, wait till 2024 unfolds. It could be a banner year for the doomsayers. But we must not think like this. I look to the arts as a redress against the tide of unreason flooding the country.
Yes, I know you have paper cuts and an itch on your back in an unreachable place and your catalytic converter is missing but peonies are in bloom. The pears are finally ripe in the fruit bowl and Joan Baez
is singing Finlandia:
Having just watched Maestro and a far better documentary,
I felt some moments of Bernstein’s ecstasy; his exit from stasis, his transport. In the movie Casablanca, the term Letters of Transit was invented to move Ingrid out of harm's way. Save me a seat on any bus to elsewhere.
Maybe the elephant in the room, mindless America turned into Guyana, will toss their mesmerizing drink and rise from the soporific fog of gullibility, like a murmuration of starlings.
I look for poems to lift me as in Major Jackson’s lXXXi
… Saplings
stand nude as Spartans awaiting orders.
The entire forest is iced-up and glistening.
Sealed in its form, the austere world I've come
to love beckons, earth runnels soon resurrected
into a delirium of streams and wild fields. Till then,
branches like black lines crisscrossing the sub-Arctic.
No comments:
Post a Comment