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Almost Cut My Hair
for release 01-01-07
Washington DC
I'm an optimistic person. I look for the best in people. But why don't I feel a sense of optimism about the new year--2007?
Maybe it's because everywhere I look there is death. Three thousand of our young men and women have left their blood in Iraq for nothing. The Godfather of Soul has said 'I feel good' for the last time. Jerry Ford lies cold in the Capitol Rotunda. Saddam Hussein has achieved broke-necked martyrdom on You Tube. Happy New Year.
When I was young and stupider, I had a string of parties on New Year's. You are nobody if not invited. Then there were all the years when I played music for other people's parties
and at bars and nightclubs slipping in the patron's vomit. It was a living.
Now, New Year's is the night that I don't dare go out. I've grown better sense. I'll just watch the ball drop on TV. Safer that way. I want to see the new year.
So, I watched the Times Square New Year's "Party." It was so orderly it made me sick. How can you have a million person party with no booze? It's a sign of the times, but it just made me sad. Plus, Dick Clark, the ageless host for our New Year's parties, didn't look or sound so ageless after suffering a stroke this year. Bless his trooper heart, but he could barely talk. Just too symbolic. Let's welcome the new year with a palsied slur.
There are positive notes. The internet is still alive and being policed by thieves and poets. Global warming hasn't progressed from the cozy to the infernal yet. Who needs polar bears? We still live in a land where an idea can make someone a billion bucks. There's always the lottery.
I'm ambulatory. I still have things to look forward to. Wait! I feel my native optimism boiling up like the Kundalini snake from my root chakra. I can't suppress it. Maybe '07 will be a four and a three or a six and an ace or a five and a two, a smooth pass at the crap table. Why am I still seeing snake-eyes and boxcars?
Perhaps it's because I'm a poet and a baby boomer, so naturally I would be thinking of death or at least health insurance as we move into the new year.
The Poet's Eye doesn't know what it will see in the coming year, but let's look together. Happy New Year!
Must be because I had the flu' for Christmas
And I'm not feeling up to par
It increases my paranoia
Like looking at my mirror and seeing a police car
But I'm not giving in an inch to fear
Cause I missed myself this year
I feel like I owe it to
someone
---Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
