Oh God, Another New Year?

I came up with a High School yearbook

slogan for the coming new year.

“2020: Coming into Focus”

You know, like 20/20 vision.

Coming into visual clarity.

Seeing with clearness.

Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be plastered all over

yearbooks across the Country because

frankly, it’s not that great of a slogan.

I’m not sure how apt the slogan will

be for those of us long removed from

the High School days.

I initially applauded my own cleverness

at the development of this slogan, but as

time went by I recognized its ultimate cheesiness.

It is not exactly how I want to enter this New Year,

this new decade actually. Although the impetus was

pure and authentic, as I do hope things come into focus for me.

It’s just not all that good as sayings go.

And who am I to make up a new saying?

Do I carry enough weight to make up such a thing?

I imagine it on tee-shirts, perhaps with a

a bespectacled illustrated character with its fist in the air

in defiance of the prior blurry years of the past.  

Standing atop some giant 2020, fireworks going off

all around the background. Across the chests of some

young people excited about their potential.

Or maybe the character sitting in a laser surgery chair

giving a thumbs up as his beady eyes are made new through

science.  I don’t really know, there’s a lot of directions.

It is, however, just a weird phrase I came up with at

my employer’s Christmas party after hearing the boss’s

speech about what 2020 is sure to bring.

I’ve tried it out a few times on my friends,

but it hasn’t exactly been received with

the adulation I’d hoped.

I suppose that’s what makes a new year

so good then. A chance to leave the nonsense

of the past year behind and start something new.

I’d prefer I didn’t sound like a terrible TV sitcom

writer, hammering a point home about change and

the future and all that tepid, formulaic tripe.

Even the review of the cheesy slogan appears to

be cheesy. I think I’ll leave my slogan here in

2019.

I’m not sure I want to take it with me.  

I’ll put it by the door, with all of last year’s stuff

I’ve been meaning to toss.

I Imagine Santa Claus

I imagine Santa Claus as a

race car driver, dressed in a red and

white slick racing suit.

Checkered Flags whipping in the wind

as he poses on the racetrack on top

of his nitro powered funny-sleigh.

I imagine Santa Claus in a three piece

red business suit, typing away at

the offices of Claus, Nicholas and Nick,

making sure to get that last lawsuit

finished.

I imagine Santa Claus sitting next to

a hospital bed, green mitten hands clasped

around those of a very old man, gasping

at his last few Christmas breaths and

hoping for the endless afterlife cheer that awaits.

I imagine Santa Claus on the set of a

pornographic movie, he’s not involved but

he’s not there to judge anyone either,

he jokes that everyone is naughty,

but they’re usually nice.

I imagine Santa Claus sitting on a beach,

watching the surf roll up the sand, he’s

a little sunburned but he’s got the elves

to spray more lotion on. He’s ready

to hang-10 and get gnarly.

I imagine Santa Claus lost

at the empty mall, there used to be a

good Cinnabon here but it seems to be gone.

It was right next to the arcade and the

Tee-Shirt & Sunglasses shack. 

I imagine Santa Claus in a semi-truck,

rolling like Mad Max through the wastelands,

being chased by the Humongous and his band

of post-apocalyptic Neo-humans who don’t

know who he is.

I Imagine Santa Claus in the Matrix,

because he’s the one, disconnecting us all

from the cyber nightmare reality. And maybe

giving us a candy-cane for all our electro

trouble.

I imagine Santa Claus imagining me,

and the smiles on my face as I open up

each thoughtful gift and thank my family

for their generosity and constant patience

with my shenanigans.

I imagine Santa Claus, all tuckered out

from his Christmas escapades, dozing

off in his big red chair by the fireplace

at the North Pole as Mrs. Claus signs the

divorce papers in the next room.

I imagine Santa Claus a bit too much I think,

it’s probably not healthy imagining Old St. Nick,

in so many places and so many scenes,

I’m confused on what it all means,

although, it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.

It’s all fancy and fun,

no real harm done.

So Merry Christmas Mr. Santa Claus,

Merry Christmas to everyone.

                 

The Consequence of Breath

I once read that life is

merely a series of consequences

from events that started long

before any of us existed.

We only have the illusion of

control over our own life.

Millions of years ago, a fish jumped

up onto a primitive beach and took a

long, deep breath, and life

since then has been as a

consequence of that breath.

Setting in motion a series of machinations and

Rube Goldberg-esque contraptions,

all tipping and bobbling and whizzing

forward until one day it produced

you and your set of problems.

Every happy birthday,

every tragic death,

every paper-cut or trip to

the Moon, has been as a result

of that consequential breath.

We have no control over the stitching

together of these threads of life, woven

in a haphazard, luck of the draw,

sort of way. We abide this situation

and accept it as living.

The trick, I suppose, is to find

meaning within the consequences of

that breath. To treasure the joyful

accidents of friends, family and the

general goodwill we should share.

To learn from the mistakes of those

consequences and try to forget how

angry and unfair they were. How brutal

and fantastically tragic they might have been,

and to accept our inconsequential role in it all.  

It is our duty to take the next breath,

to exhale into the mists of consequence and

face the potentials, the problems, the price

with dignity, responsibility, and a crap ton of

self-deprecating humor.

It's Gross, I'm Sure

The sickness of writing is

how polluted you feel when

you can’t actually put words on the

page.

The words build up like bile in your word duct,

corrupting your moods

and jumbling your thoughts into

incoherent ramblings.   

It’s a serious condition that can’t

always be remedied through conventional

means, nothing makes sense and everything

is so terribly banal.

There’s a steady drip of words leaking

from my brain, yet they don’t always

get as far as the page. They get muddled

in a cocktail of insecurity and anxiety.

It’s perverse that the only true cure

is to vomit up the collection of unused

words in a speckled puddle, swish it around

and see which words are the salve.

It’s also gross.

Like, ick, why would you use the imagery

of vomit to describe that?

Word Duct back up, that’s why.

There are so many levels to the sickness of

writing, it’s difficult to quantify them all.

The condition is dreadful and can’t be easily

soothed with some balm.

It’s only added to by the general frustrations

of living. I haven’t had a passionate kiss in

nearly a year. I haven’t felt the gaze of a lover or

the joy of expressing that intimacy in so long.

And it backs up the word duct something awful,

like you gotta get in there with a plumbing snake and

really root around to shake the words loose and

get something on the page.

Even if it’s nonsense, like most of this,

at least it is something plastering the page.

I vomited it up,

Now kiss me.

Picture from: https://www.hennkim.com/