A Peculiar New Year's Eve Revisited ---By Maya and ChiAn There were no firecrackers, There were no red eggs, A day drenched in February Hot Chocolate In a glass of milk chilled; A cube of ice crow Singing Siamese Sycamore Godsend brushes Drawing a smile upon your browse Painting a tile upon your house On the river banks Muddy cradles sinking Lead washed limestone minds Drawing in abstract signs Pointing towards mad chauffeurs Driving a gold plated Manchester golf Cart in supermarkets with seats for infants Growing up in the Tropic Of Cancer Wildly spreading news of the coming Christ playing Hindu checkers In the shadow of a computer screen; Frosty falcon veils Concealing steely sight By a clever design Stolen from the masked man with a bamboo fan in his hand Fooling the lion dancers To climb up a ladder leading To a cardinal pack of mice Thought to bring auspicious suspicious malicious delicious Candies which no longer taste as sweet Or bitter gourd growing Beside plots of watermelon velvet Primitively printed in brown Maimed crystal churches Drying up on a wrinkled flower Wondering where the others have wandered Eleven of them arriving in a dress Stictched and sewn together On this day which is no different From an old year shuffling out the door To a new pathway with mare litter on the floor Puke dripping down the walls Defecated by ranch gutter tenants Worth no more than the rats hiding under the garbage Containers filled with ruptured dreams Collapsing a sea opened and sentenced To be a fisherman or to be a kingfisher Scaling Mt. Horeb With magic staffs removed from brooms A rose garland funeral procession Enlightened by mourners Employed from the depths of hypocrisy Frightened by alcoholic Melodrama coffin given a joust On mahjang tables and dinner chatter Cloaked in black wings Broken from a white truth Slowly descending to the core of morality Missing a T. To be inserted Between reason and bigotry Between mountains sold and stories told Between rainbow gold and widow's cold Faraway from the lost shore Further than Saturn laughter Is there hope? Is there America? This end of the road Clouded as a blistered toad Praying for candy lollipops Losing their flavors in a myth Composed as a canon Exhibited in museums Built out of wax castles Disappearing under Persian rugs And then eve appeared To be a spider's sting More deadly than poison. There is to be no more childhood flights Thinking about years coming and going As seasonal gusts churning Within my heart bleeding graveyards Being resting grounds for mockingbirds Pecking at Vulcan worms in the dusk How much is a tael of gold? How much is a flash of lightning? How much is a grain of sand? How much is a second son? How much is a dime chime? How much is a moment of silence? How much is your orange tambourine? How much is a fallen star? How much is the man on the tree? How much is an ointment river? Running under slick spank modernization Excommunicated from his tribe Left to be food for wolves Howling atop a salient crown Plain and made out of apricot hair Rare as a speck of dust Fair as a ship wreck bust Bare as an Italian crust Wear ass shit wisdom just As you found yourself here Catching the winds already gone To Katmandu temples glittering Like a rolling thunder meandering Down the annals of futility Below the soil weeping or flood storms Tearing across the lands Like a piece of paper shredded Never to be discovered Never to be misunderstood Never to be defiled Never to be compiled Never to be dictated In darkness and solitude In madness and gratitude Rain drying on his face, He held on to his gun As he would hold his lies At the root of his past Train going south On tracks lined with brimstone Transported from Sodom and Gomorrah In a time filled with linen antidotes Shaped like a liquid thorn Piercing deeply into his soles Wearied and bruised By the pursuit for freedom Not to be found in the forest green Not to be bound in the word Of God not spoken or written In shadow puppet shows Festivals colorfully entrenched In Berlin vases with oasis lilies Painted on the outside Given as a gift to a woman Shrinking up in reflections Of grand illusions on the television Set to live a hundred and fifteen years Longer than the relic limerick About the John who jumped over Frank Thomas Who shot the left side of his brain Approximately right side of a drain Clogged with choke and coke Glass bottles replaced by plastic Disposable diapers for convenient motherhood Discounted at fifteen percent off the retail price Of a brisk melon beverage Little better than average Mundane secular cymbals clanging Behind a black Mercedes Reconditioned by Achilles Or a blue blind Archimedes O what difference does it make? Asks a voice behind a door Closing down for lunch Breaks through the walls Bah! Tis New Year Eve Senseless exchange of gifts And stranded memories Lifted by phantoms scratching His head aching and matching Every one that went by As the lines on his hands Are erased from fate or destiny Created by superstitions Borrowed from repetitions Of unskilled manipulations Stuck in the middle of cultural inheritance Pinned to the notice board yesterday Everything comes to a halt At the end of a polka dot Old and haggard Used as a disguise hiding nothing But a pawn in the exalted scheme of things Unfolding before the blink Is forever lost...