happy new year

happy new year to everyone!

i sincerely hope that you find 2010 to be a "vintage year," one that you'd be happy to revisit later and drink up the memories, which by then will have aged and grown rich with flavor... what's more, i hope you are able to appreciate the events of this year right when you "pick them off the vine." everything, everything, only comes once. i hope you can see this, and instead of feeling sad or regretful (as i'm wont to do), i hope that the fullness of the moment fills you up, and makes you love or laugh, brimful of appreciation...

***

am i out of touch?
did the pain of what i didn't do
hurt too much?

i'm so tired of hating me
and passing that off as sincerity.
i want to cut the lag
between tonight's hopes
and tomorrow's reality.

there's so much i want to say
there's so much i want to do
so give me a moment
to be perfectly clear
give me an open shot
to your heart's ear:

i want you to understand
all the vague but well-meaning things that i am.

***

please, god, of all resolutions i make, help me keep the following:

1) teach me to be patient and gentle in all things. help me to always be aware that a tool is only a tool; instrumentality and an eye only on the ends oftentimes only causes one to "trip on a rake."

2) help me to appreciate everything and everyone. i want all the people that have ever touched my heart to live again through me, informing my contact with the world, shaping the force of my kindness like the funnel of absence in a whirlwind.

3) help me find a way to express kindness.

4) despair is heavy within me; it always has been and always will be. i am not certain if it can or should be removed from me. in the uncertainty of the struggle with it, help me to not give up. help me to remember those times when i have been able to understand others because of my struggle with the fragility and irrationality and self-destructiveness within myself. help me to remember that sometimes a too-quick redemption will only make for a shallow heart.