New Years Eve
2020
The year is notched
and ready to fly
getting high still gets me by
spun out in meaningless space
push the gate
and the demon year falls away
thru a door in the floor—
erased?
not this one.
This one will rise
Hiking, 4-legged with my sticks,
just the biggest dog in the pack
in possession of car keys
a keyboard and thumbs
Numb from the news
And nowhere to be but here
Evergreens glisten, cloudless last day
of something…
In L.A. they’re dropping like insects, like humans
to the tune of ambulance sirens,
dying in the service of masked strangers
in hospitals where they’ve run out of oxygen
and gasping bodies fill chapels and gift shops.
Sing your simple morning songs, big dog.
Wind scours all traces of toxins from these hills
the ridge is a paper cutout
So quiet I can hear the stepping of a 15 pound terrier
What if everyone has died but us?
Is this Year Zero?
Feel the death of the year
Year on a vent
2020 falls, landing caught on the living
like these aspens fall into the arms of others
one family, connected.
The years falls, and what rises to fill that hole ?
In the heaven of torn roots
will you bend like this young spruce
muscling your way though
to live a life in the sun —
We’re survivors
we climb in our rising.
We dogs climb this mountain up to the saddle
watched by trees and stones beneath our feet
our silly songs, our carrot treats
till all drops away and it’s nothing but sky, and
we rise.
Rise up into the sky like that,
‘cause you know the ending of this story
—there is none.
but this alone endures
Forest Beauty. River Peace. Utter Silence.
2020’s a sinkful of filthy dishes
after a terrible party crashed by a biker gang on acid
and how we ever gonna get all this dry burnt shit offa these pots?
2020 is 20 years lived into this bloody century
This year
like a crumpled piece of exhausted manuscript
cries for an editor
covered in red on the cutting room floor
is that ink or blood?
And that door in the floor?
Not for us now, no how
We rise.
2020 dying on a vent
2020 suffocating under a white cop’s knee cries “Mama….”
2020 assassinated by republican anti-mask idiots
2020 shot dead by guns of progress
and killers with lawyers come here to bury freedom
Men in suits set her on fire
Year tossed on a pyre of banned books
2020 lynched by proud boys in shirts reading
“six millions’ not enough” in the village green.
2020 purged from the roles, can’t vote
shot dead for trying
John Lewis forever bleeds on that bridge
RBG tries to hold on thru 4 kinds of cancer
Dies leaving us no answer
2020’s
a heap in the common grave of my mind
a mote in the eye of this god fascists pray to
Worldwide storms & wildfires
polar bears, glaciers
children in cages
Every unwanted pregnancy locked in a room
with Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
The year commits suicide from depression
chokes on a zoom glitch
an enemy hack,
The tack and the wall
The year is notched and ready to fly
2020 taught the world how to die
and how to hold on tight while we cry
against the odds
and all the lies
sizing it up, at the end
we are rising.
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