How Best To Waste It?

 I

The first of January drifted in,
mundane as the milkman’s daily clinking,
at some point between Auld Lang Syne
and the joyful hugging.
Now we’re just bleary-eyed mortals again,
mechanically emptying the house of mince pies
and complaining about television.
Anticipation fading, secret vows
already stale and defeated.
After all, it’s only a number.
Nothing’s changed

II

Regiments edging forward slowly, clutching
this month’s potential in plastic key form.
City conveyor belts, plotting the immediate future,
already picturing handing it back over –
to a different face, it’s true – and hey, in return:
anchored down by possession, collection,
status achieved chemically via paid admission.
Shelves to be filled, brain cells to be killed.
High Street windows; new image reflected
in dead-eyed mannequin sentries.
Pay day has arrived again.

III

One does not equate the other
yet how quickly they assume,
these parents, employers, lecturers
caring less for expansion than for imposed letters;
the leader of the alphabet swelling with new-found importance
while children wallow in ignorance.
Books forever nearing the cartoon-cliff of extinction,
booted off the edge amidst primitive chanting
as, plugged into pleasure, we’re whisked backwards.
Grunting, squandering, in these hedonistic days:
a useless tribe of ‘clever’ cunts.

IV

 

Some argue it’s only an illusion
while a deaf audience laughs in their face.
Ha. Watch how quickly goldfish learn
aversion to pushing the outer limits, instead turn
around to kid themselves for another day
that they could bullet through if they wanted, but choose to stay.

Topical debate quickly becomes anomaly

for you cannot waste what you never possessed,

while hypothetical restraints, like gratitude, transparently delay

the strength to wield and achieve; instead the insistence that we’re blessed:

time spent in self-deceit helps the greener grass fade.