Eve of new year, rebuffed, alone

challenge burns - to at long last embrace the real!

reality of simply being one, alone, unloved

never to be loved again

yet somehow endlessly and pointlessly alive

Learn to act as one, not weakly wait for love that will not come

make solid plans to move this flesh around

shepherd it through weary world while it still stubborn moves

no falling back on dreams of rescue courtesy of death

false hope for loving kindness in some semi-stranger's smile

Must change! must make my rituals anew

build them now for one

no waiting for some mystic other anymore

no one is there, no one! and no one wants to be

just recognize that plain white fact

Have known real love while many don't

Be grateful for that past tense truth

accept, you selfish bitch, shut up

get on with things.

And so the magic night of change draws near

and sundry thoughts compete

this New Year's vows all centre on sharp change,

clean end to sloppy hope

no more postponements (awaiting deathly rescuing)

and - most of all! no more encounters with gilded man

who in the autumn claimed a date

embraced then spurned

was warm then cold, hot then total ice

enraged then smiling sweet then absent utterly - no!

surely lesson is at long last learned!

no more of that

A simple vow, December 31st

avoid the places where he is and where he goes

eschew events he recommends

resist response to e-mails, phonecalls too

his language always vague enough to offer nothing firm

fragile woven words

all maybe-might

a silky slidey trap

***

(part 2 of "bright nights" follows)