Here Comes the New Year
A poem written and performed for Adult Entertainment, Cafe OTO, 29th December
Here Comes the New Year
Here comes
the new year.
Burst right in
through the door,
wearing a pink
feather boa.
Hi. Hello. It’s me.
The fireworks
of hope and delusion,
it says, all eager,
eyes bulging,
the unwanted stranger.
I’m the nightmare
of your personality
facing you down.
Just logging off
from the personal growth
consultancy firm,
it reminds you,
a little white halo
beneath its left nostril,
a little overweight,
bad breath, this beautiful potential
of trying to give a fuck.
Let me in, it says.
I brought my friends, too.
Can we come in?
You’re already in, you say.
So anyway, it says.
I’m the good new year,
and I’m with my good friends,
the sad new year and the bad new year
and that one new year who absolutely
lost their marbles.
They come in. Suddenly,
all your problems look drenched with solutions.
Sin becomes substance.
For a while, death lies elsewhere.
All your excesses become undone.
Doing undeath with the new years.
Hours later, the years
are getting wine
all over the sheets
nailed to the walls again
at your after party.
They’ve stapled jelly
to all your files
and stuffed a fistful
of spatulas
in the fax machine.
You get demonic.
The new year says:
I’m the new year, I’m better.
You say, better for what?
True insanity. Like I even care.
Fucked off with all the years,
you stumble drunk toward the doorway
at the end of the hall,
jumping over
the raccoon pit,
climbing under
the giant spike trap,
and avoid giving up
completely.
I’ve gotta get out, you think,
before the party ends,
before you get back
to work, to the life
you don’t want,
getting the actual shit
stuck between your actual teeth,
sucking at the teet
of big boy work
and big girl work,
the pleasure in displeasure.
You breath in
and pull on your
big boy pants,
your big girl skirt.
The years stand around you.
They don’t want you to go.
You are encircled by them.
The good year the bad year the sad year
and the year that went completely fucking crazy.
They fill your glass and say:
‘Here’s to your dose of dreaming,
Here’s to one more try
and one last fuck in the dust.
Here’s a raised glass, just a little
something we call the pleasure of delusion.’
As much as you deny them
They are not wrong.
You walk
into the new day’s
light
and turn
right round
the sun.
The ice cracks.
Birds burp and bees bluster.
It’s your two feet
that carry
you past the skyscrapers
and the needles in the ditch
and the NOS canisters in the puddle
back to
that familiar
unfamiliar trespass.
Portal to a dream.
You dress your lover’s hair
in the low light.
Brush your
fingers against
the back
of the broken
and cracked bough.
You both get a wet arse
and stumble
through the drunken
forest.
Growth?
It’s for the birds.
Dreams?
For the buds.
Pleasure?
For the sods.
I would rather be mad
with you
than with anyone
else
on earth.
So kiss me the quickest
and shiver.
Because the years depart
even quicker now.
Thank you for James Massiah for inviting me to read and perform, and for creating such a generous and inclusive space for old-timers and newcomers to feel welcome. The reading led me to a week of really reflecting on what my work is doing and who it’s for, the warmth of the event radiating through me and exciting me.
I think there’s a lot of bullshit around readings at the moment, it’s all either in-and-out behaviour of cliques or the institutionally rubber-stamping of government approved funds, different kinds of bad. January is a great month to try and think about how to kick bad habits.
And with that, I’m going to try and write here again more, too. More soon.