…let me begin

So it’s a brand new year but in these early days not exactly shaping up to be a grand old year…unless by that you mean another year of the grand old party making a grand old clusterfuck of things by always defaulting to the whims of a bunch of definitely old grandstanders…which they may be doing anew but let’s face it got old long ago.

So, for those of you who go in for that sort of thing…here’s a few things the Washington Post was good enough to cobble together some links to in which some genuinely great poets took a stab at saying something about the transition from the last year to the next one:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/01/04/poems-that-capture-hopes-fears-about-new-year/

…& for those of you who think that the first lot should just “pack it in”…

…& for those of you who are gluttons for punishment…

growing up is hard to do
& many a trite phrase is annoyingly true

so I’ve some thoughts to share with you
though I’ll do my best not to leave you blue

there once was a day every wolf was a pup
& if things went their way then they just might grow up

but if something overfloweth, it wasn’t ever their cup
’cause out in the wild, shit don’t ever let up

but when everything’s wild, escape is an art
hell, the price of survival is to play the game smart

why carry the load when you could drive a cart?
you get the idea, though that’s hardly the start

there’s safety in numbers, to outweigh tooth & claw
but a death sentence sure, not to speak as you saw

the real clincher, ​ though​, I guess was the tools
around about there we just re-wrote the rules

started stepping faster down that long, long trek
towards finally, absolutely stacking the deck

but the cold, hard truth is a cold, hard thing
& for all there is in the world to make the heart sing

somehow we got to life today
with no big, bad beast but us to slay

& the damndest thing happened along the way
we fashioned a world from reality’s clay

but we didn’t stop there – we couldn’t, we knew
& that was the least of the conclusions we drew

until, as sure as one & one made two
it was ​”​the world​”​ that was “real​-​ly true”

only wouldn’t you know it, we couldn’t agree
just whose world it was we weren’t trying to flee

for when we looked at another’s, it was easy to see
that, bottom line, it’s just a gospel of me

& all our vaunted prowess is illusory
its value persists just so long as we all agree

that no matter how many circuits we turn on this earth
we’ll be shown to be right as to what it was worth

but some things you really just can’t comprehend
like what happens next, you know, after the end

but whatever it is, some rules just don’t bend

& for all we seek to gather money
like good little bees in their hive, making honey

with every breath that we take it’s our time that we spend

so leave things better than you found them ’cause all you got was a lend
& it’s all them as come after whose garden we tend

but if it’s all that you do ​,​ just don’t make things any tougher
& if some won’t go along​,​ don’t make all of us suffer

[…with thanks to a long-suffering acquaintance…]