A Scumbag's New Year Poem by Sofiul Azam

for Amir Khasru Swapan

Days are scenes slipping past a train's window.
And when every New Year comes, it crashes
against the promises not kept.

I cringe in fear,
as if the Furies hunting me down to death
with kukris clattering against each other

and standing by to pour revenge's molten metal
on my wounds. Yet, somehow I survive
as a river's flow punctuated by barrages

before its full stop into the sea -
with all of its weird exclamations along the way
and its questions terrifying as a one-eyed

pirate's artificial hand with a hook in front.
Lifted away by belches in between
a year's feasting start and end, I let

the clear pool of my pledges
slowly fill with the scum of a thousand lures;
and at year's end, regrets form around me

like soldiers in ambush. And here I'm for scrutiny
under the microscopic lenses of the promises
made over again by a fraction of a second.

Yet, somehow I survive - with a tang
of unpleasantness on the tongue, to make more
coldblooded promises to drug the Furies

till another year knocks like a conscience.


from SAFE UNDER WATER (2014)