Luke Smith

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New Year's

Blind drunk, out-shouting New York,
You dance on tables and shriek
At strangers and keep your angel near.
Until that silver comet strikes the square
And sends a shock that shakes
You to your core and knocks

You off your feet and you're
Proclaiming that 'this will be my year.'
I can't help but laugh when you get
All Fourth of July and shout
'I'm Jack Kerouac - too rare to die.'
A rare kind in the 'land of the free.'

I've grown to know these moods.
Over time. Besides, it would be rude,
Would it not, to refuse your hand
When your bleary eyes glimmer and
You grab me like some teen girl who's just fled
Home and stopped dressing for her dad.

This won't last. So I don't sigh or groan
When you claim you could 'talk Christ down
From that cross. The city will offer its landmarks
And countless streets. A grey sky arcs
above you and gives you space enough to roam
And sizzle and spark. A controlled flame.

And just as that flame - dormant
Since the Wall fell- threatens to melt Manhattan
Into the Hudson, you catch your outline
In an icy window: your hands down
Your pants, bald patch like a tonsure,
Your paunch poking through your shirt.

It often happens. When the ball drops
Or when we've been drinking. Life speeds
By us as if in dog years. We fall
Through our beauty and lose our shape
and become the caricature
Of the thing we never really were

But come, it is New Year's
And we are both here.

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