Resolution of the Year

The new year was rung in,
the rhinestone globe's decent snail slow,
so the tinkle of the chalice with a roar,
flammable liquids and bubbling dilute syrup,
but I've already broken my glass.
-- long before the last call

Gunshots with the ringing bell, the noise, the wails,
and again someone will awaken dead,
a first toll for the last toll,
ah, Poe, the ringing of the bells!

What, when, where?
How was that last time of the last year?
The same tokens, the same trinkets.
The same confused look and confetti coated hair.
My sad lack of faith in the decades,
they march so carelessly in.
Would it not have been enough the first time around?

Time has come and faded the image between the frames,
the resolution dampened with dripping sun beams,
almost like piss upon the freshest snow.
I cannot adhere to the list of demands,
I made too much a hated braid of thorns of a bridle,
but I've pressed myself,
rose thin, rose flat, rosy bright, rosary repent.
Count those drops: they love me, they love me not.

So another picture to snap up the memory,
but it's just negatives to discard after the light arises
-- a day's newness, all's forgotten,
the pixels bleached to dull yellow from white.
Sepia prints with mundane cloth for the colors.

Yet now my own dilemmas have not changed,
the newness of the numbers just a superficial stamp.
The chain did not break, the world did not end,
no burden was lifted as a feather from the shoulders,
no merriness enough to cover all this.

The time has closed they say,
a new thing contrived with the twelfth stricken cord.
The resolutions cast with the splintered bottles,
but it has now occurred to me, no solution to redo,
-- still waiting for the thirteenth tone.

© 1999

[Previous] [Next] [Home] [Contents]

Asdzani Bah & her Pandora Box