methinks, the would-be poets
have all lost their sense of humor
and are engaged in a tragic struggle
to retain their personal identity,
to keep from falling off some edge,
to decry a most miserable love affair,
to keen coyote-like at a disappearing moon,
to obtain sympathies only available
from other well-meaning sycophants,
and have also lost a certain dignity
that goes with the creative urge, the
willingness to throw off convention, to
explore, to invent situations unreal,
where they are the victors, the
heroes and heroines of a dying literature,
and to laugh out loud at all the circumstances
that have brought them to expose themselves
in such an unseemly manner
I raise a New Year's glass to you all
may you find peace, dignity, purpose
and regard in the coming year, and
overcome the forces of doom