New Year's Resolutions Poem by Windsor Guadalupe Jr

The days are numbered
And the erstwhile festivities
Die in redundancy.

I am sick
Of all these people
Writing their resolutions
On a stark piece of paper.
Their austerity crippled them
And their inconsistencies
Maimed their pace.

But then,
Let them.
Let them change
Their ways:

Let them
Eat less
Pray more
Live fast
And die young.

Let them.
Let them be more assiduous
Allow them
To tell you
That they’d wean
In their vices
And their peccadilloes

But trust me,
This is all but
A farce
A temporary slapstick relief.

Put your faith in me
When I say,
They will eat their words more.
They will pray lesser and lesser
That the gods will be envious
Of their idiosyncrasies and omissions.

The children
Are blinded that the
New Year’s Eve
Is a moment where we dab
The wounds of our past
And make way for
The impending pleasures.

And all the brokenhearted
People say:
This year,
I will learn to forget.

But they never do.

And the blasphemers
Will say:
I will stop these
Utterances.

But they never do.
What kind of treacherous sedation
Is this?
I disgust people
Who say they’d open
Themselves to more love
And less disdain
But what do they do?
They eat themselves up
In the process.
They never learn.

The entry
Of the new year
Disgusts me.

I remember a muse
Telling me
Everyday
Making me feel like a pyrotechnic:
I will burst for you
In a flourish of colors.

But what happened there?
She ate herself
And excreted herself.

I remember someone
Telling me that there
Are people who come
To your doorstep
And never leave.

But what happened there?
She killed herself,
Buried herself,
Resurrected herself
Only to die again.

And I remember telling myself:
This will never happen again.

But what did I do?
I think you know.