new year

Happy Chinese New Year of the Monkey

Year of the Monkey, 2016

The key is not the money
The key is in the monkey
360 degrees a somersault
It’s the ultimate glee

The key can’t be the monkey
For he’s an absentee
Roiling in the cosmic dust
Mischief’s devotee

The key must be in money
For money makes you free
All things can be bought and sold
This uncanny latchkey

Money’s in the monkey
Monkey’s in the money
The progeny of heaven and earth
Life’s consummate lessee

Intelligence is money
that monkey can guarantee
To survive the wild and not get mauled
Use well this precious money

Craftiness is monkey
Scheming for your honey
When money is fraught with peril and fraud
One sneeze, all gone with the monkey

Well this money and monkey
Neither is a peewee
Now they join hands and take us all
Hurtling down the scree

Threshold

It’s the anticipation and what to do leading up to the New Year, and what to do afterward that consume our mind. Fireworks, parties, new clothes, liquid of all kinds…

The moment that turned 2012 to 2013 came and went quietly–at least, for most of us–unless you were born or dead at precisely that time, that marker has no transformative quality but to acknowledge a new beginning, a regeneration in the dying season, that we are given another chance (hooray for another chance!)

It’s a good reason to clean house, tie up loose ends, and file the past away. Excitement of the newness comes from the blank canvas, where anything is possible.

At the stroke of midnight

We are the Magi

we cross over into a vast space

arriving with gifts

with objects unformed

for that which we do not

and names unknown.

understand.

Only desire is made stronger

Desire

by the presence of a star

leads us

the same star

and ignorant Love.

that has been guiding us

We are the unknowing

since all the forgotten years.

monarchs of nothing

It is bright in the new night

arriving in the morning

ever enchanting.

of the New.

We have far to go

We have far to go,

and much to do.

Magic drives us.

Clara Hsu/Jack Foley

Image taken from: thechristianclipart.com

Poem “New Year” first published in Tower Journal, Volume 4, no. 2