Temporal

you don't want to be forgotten.

you want a tiny pinprick in your spine every time your name slides down a praising tongue

you want a little goose bump on your wrist

when someone passes you with a second glance of recognition

you don't want to fade away.

it's obvious

and understandable

but I wish I couldn't dissect this as easily as I think I have

because I like it when I don't understand you quite so quickly.

you're complex.

so maybe I could tell you

not to worry.

you're not a vibrant, teeming, trembling leaf

that people pluck and carefully put into the folds

of an old white book that smells of paste

and put it away on a shelf

and move it to the attic

and put it in a bin

and sell it at a garage sale

for a quarter and a dime.

I know

you don't want to be forgotten

and for what it's worth

your name always dances on my nose

and slides through my brain

and steams out my ears

and mists down my cheeks

and always marches out of my mouth

like a defiant little soldier

who knows there will be roses

on his grave.

and my words may not be immortal

but when they fall

they make a sound.

A New Year

I was sitting on a couch on New Year’s Eve, almost New Year’s Day, and wondering: Am I silly to sit around a television and count down with the rest of America while an oversized ball slowly dips into the sparkly, bright letters reading 2009? A few minutes before the countdown, I felt my heart racing and I wondered why. How would this actually change my life? Besides the fact that I would need to change the final digit on the year that I write when I do headers for classes, my life really wouldn’t be that different. The change was merely superficial: It was all about a date.

I guess the central question becomes: What makes a date? More specifically, what do these dates tell us about our lives? Is time no more than an arbitrary denotation that individuals began to use to try to foster organization and stability in a world that has shown itself so often to be so hectic? Time is really a funny thing when you think about it. Our calendar system may differ from that of other nations or societies, yet all of us seem to function just fine. It’s not as though the dates have a static fixed meaning. The meaning only comes from the symbolic and emotional fixations that we have placed on them.

And to be honest, on paper, New Year’s Day doesn’t feel that much different from any other day. You may wake up a little tired after the party you attended the night before, but stores stay open and Howie Mandel still offers excited individuals deals in exchange for suitcases. However, somehow it feels different. It’s like we turn open a new book in the shelf of life and have just started to read the pages. The characters may seem familiar and the plot details too, yet the tone of the narration has slightly changed. For some of us, it is a little more hopeful and for others, there is a tinge of sorrow.. We make resolutions about things that we could have tried to change at any point in time. However, it is this fresh feeling that we get with a new year that enables us to put behind our past mistakes and trudge forward.