The new year’s
The old year,
But you’re now
And you’re here.

What you want,
Please don’t fear,
Are right now,
Are right here.

They say they
Never veer,
From old year
To new year.

Don’t let them
Steal your ear,
With the old’s
“Hold now here.”

‘Cause you’re now
And you’re here,
You may choose
Your new year.

Whatever nonsense comes to mind
Keep on coming in.
Most this so called “sense,” I find,
Wears a little thin
When you look at what’s behind
The empty if not angry grin
That often fronts a face that’s blind
To what you’ve done and been.

So send sense a saucy letter
Telling them you’re free
Of all their sweetly seasoned natter,
Self-sold flattery.
If you can imagine better,
Let it be.
“Nonsense” doesn’t matter,
Not to me.

A little girl grew an astounding beard,
A worldly, dark, confounding beard,
A burly, stark, yet downy beard
That swirled from ground to ears.

It took her fifty years to grow
And she was barely six!
This beard was full of realms unknown,
It was thick with tricks.
Many called it nest or home,
Sometimes even other kids
Would run through as would a comb,
Though one never did.

Every year she’d go compete
At the Beard Olympics.
Every year she’d sweep the meet
At the Beard Olympics.
She was admired by young and old,
She’d leave wrapped in a shell
Of beard and medals gold,
She wore her jungle well.

They recently found something weird,
No one was in that bearish beard!
The little girl had disappeared!
And that beard still wins every year.

Illustration by DALL-E in the style of John Bauer.

This plays off the Little Jack Horner nursery rhyme.

Little Jack Horner
Sat in the corner,
Eating his Christmas pie;
He put in his thumb,
And he was struck dumb
When it poked him right in the eye.

He’d been baked in pie,
Jack had a good cry,
Salting a dish usually sweeter;
Baker checked Horn,
To find pie not done,
And put him back in until Easter.

I’m all out of secrets today.
There’s nothing I know
That’ll get us to go
A particular, interesting way.

I fear the obvious must do.
This common ground
Is all I’ve found
Where only truth is true.
Unless, of course,
We’ve another source –
Dare we turn to you?

I need a day that’s all about me!
I want to hear everyone say:
“It’s time for Meday!”
Let’s do it today!

I need a day to get away
With whatever I may,
A day when all I do is okay,
A day that belongs to me.

That’s the day I’ll laugh and play
And always get my way.
I need a day that’s all about me,
Besides every other day.

It’s hard to swim in cement
Unless you catch it early.
Even then, I must lament,
You should continue stirring
To keep from turning fossil.

You have to meet the hostile,
The harmful, harsh and hard
If you’re to get full grown.
To swim among the stars
Dive into the stone.

I’ve never been so strong,
This is the health I’ve sought,
The practice has been long
Doing laps in parking lots,
Training for granite seas.

Nothing worthy’s done with ease,
So stop smirking like a trout!
You float the world like a duck.
Help me out!
You know I’m stuck!

My bathroom has no bath
So in the toilet I must splash
Until I’m sudsed and brushed
And quite cleanly flushed.

Atop the mountains tall and strange,
Abottom seas of change,
There are beasts of strangest strains
Who’d die upon the plains.
Beasts with breath of burning wind,
Brutes of stony heart and skin,
Bucks who trample on the stars,
Boars sleeping on Hades’ bars,
Behemoths who must send all fleeing –
Beings barbarous but being.

Beasts of which we’re all afraid
Who’d die on Normal’s blade.

I’ll miss them if they ever go
And leave us safe but all alone.

Illustration by DALL-E in the style of William Blake.

Qime stuck his fingers in a stump
And then he left them there
So he’d always feel a clump
Of wood and moss in boggy air.

He wished to always breathe the breeze
From his favorite mountain top,
He left a lung among the trees
Where piney winds spin and pop.

His toes dig into shelly sands,
His ears hear haunting howls,
Knees kneel in the holy lands,
Heart’s gone soaring with the owls.

One eye’s on the sunset feast,
Another, the sunrise hunts.
He has himself released
And is here and there at once.

Qime gave himself away in full
But still pours past the brim,
While he wove him into all
The world wove into him.