Waterbug

Happy New Year's Eve

What better time to play
with the new stylus I bought
as a christmas present to me!
Happy New Year, with this happy face
I hope to meet a good future.

Pam

Eve's Eves

As may have been noted by others this day,
tonight is New Year's Eve,
and last night was New Year's Eve Day Eve
and the night before that
was New Year's Eve Day Eve Day Eve.

A fly on the wall at any New Year's Party
will see Eve's dropping
left and right.

Well, we men can't have enough nights
on which to get drunk and get laid,
if not too drunk to get laid, but
even then, we can be persuaded
next morning that we've just forgotten
how good it was. The Old Adam in us
loves the Old Eve.

Dean

Happy Old Year

Happy Old Year.
Why this effort to make everything new?
Wouldn't it be fun to pretend
we'd time traveled backwards,
that we're about to enter 1894, for example?
Or better yet, that we've come back
to 2004 (our distant past),
when people still depended on e-mail
and didn't have to worry about telepathic viruses.

We could view the world with ancient eyes,
see a patina on everything,
turn the world sepia,
like faded newsprint,
be amused to look at those
antique 2004 car models (metal! rubber! GROSS!!!),
notice how everyone moves in quick
jerky rhythms as if in "Old Time" silent films.

When will poets learn their true calling:
To make it old.
Come to think of it, most poets
are doing a great job of it.

Dean

My new year

My new year
depends on me.
If I don't get it newly,
it won't be anyone's fault
but me.

Once, coming out of
the Phillips Gallery,
and walking through
the streets of Washington,
everything had a brightness.
Where did that come from?
Me and the artists that showed me
their vision.

If I think "new"
and then look around, the world
lights up with my seeing.

Pam

The New Year?

Been der, done dat
and done it again and again
(redundat) -- why

just about a year ago
we had a new year,
and I think we had one
the year before, too.

Actually, I suspect
they were slightly used.
Most time these days
seems pre-owned.

Of course, I get my time
from newspapers and newscasts
(I mean, if I can't get newness
from THE news, where else
can I go for the real thing?)

But increasingly I feel
that the time being purveyed to us
as new is old stuff, polished up,
refurbished, but it just doesn't have
that new-time look or feel.

My recommendation:
Don't accept this new year
without a comprehensive
warrantee.

Dean

The new year

The year approaches its end,
and I remember its springing and
how I loved the fluid grace of the word
two thousand and three - 2003 -
with all its loops and curves.
2004 ends with severity, that four
permitting no curlicues.
Maybe it's a schoolbook year,
ending with discipline.
This is just play,
but let's plan,
as we postulate the new year,
to lose weight,
to get better,
to finish all our projects,
to never have any ice cream
(groan) again.
Well, maybe
rarely.

Pam

Penal Servitude and other 'tudes

From cardinal to blue jay to jail bird,
and what's the color for jail birds
this season? Black and white stripes?
Bright orange jump suits? (Speaking
of winter and autumn hues...)

We're all under death sentence
(as well as life sentence).
Some of us linger longer
in the appeal process.

For example, you continue
to appeal to me, and I, I hope,
to you. Granting our mutual appeal
(shall we?), we could live on
in our cells for decades more.

(A gas chamber is a pellet court.
Sorry, couldn't resist that.)

It's exercise time. I'm going out
to play in your eyes.

Dean

Parole from a life sentence

I wonder, as I travel along the dangerous highway
from home to my job, listening to the latest news
about sniper Lee Boyd Malvo, just sentenced to
"Life in Prison," what the pros and cons are.
After all, shouldn't he suffer the death
he was so willing to inflict? But on the other hand,
Can humane methods really hurt that much?
(And would we really want to let him loose so soon?)

And what about me? Am I eligible for parole?
Have I been a good prisoner?

Pam

camouflage

Odd that, outside the tropics,
so few birds are green.
You'd think, in their spring
and summer nests,
green would be protection
against hawks and cats (or
are they colorblind?).

Or maybe the trees are full
of green birds
that I've never noticed
(they turn orange in autumn,
black and white in winter),

and the air
as full of spirits,
visible as airy amoebae --
mistaken for imperfections
in our retinae -- if we look
for a long time at the blue sky.

But most spirits take on
protective covering to hide
from whatever the dark of endless space
once concealed (and may again),
pretending to be us (nobody here
but us bodies), for what cosmic forces
would bother to meddle with bodies,
planetary prisoners sentenced
to life after life without parole.

"Parole" means "word",
so maybe we can get time off
for good behavior (or for speaking well
in our poems)
to revisit who we once were.

Dean

Who's Hue

Someday, against a sky
too red for sunset,
I'll look for a bluejay,
as good an omen then
as ever a rainbow.

Remember the "Bluebird of Happiness"?
Odd color for happiness,
also for obscenity (blue laws)
and the blues,

but nice to pretend
we aren't hanging by our feet
into blackness, if only vivid blue
weren't so often toxic.

"What's your favorite color."
Good pick-up line, if you're a physical universe
seducing lonely beings.

As a kid, I always answered red.
(Fire or ice, either suffice.)
Now I'm more politic. It's always safest to say
I like all my children equally.

(But only because they are
my children. I'm not taking responsibility
for the colors YOU create.)

Dean