March 5, 1984 6:30 p.m. Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri

---

Poem for the New Year 1984

Those "me decade" people turned me off...
like the lightswitch
And the grasp of the "touch-me" crowd
pulled the shirt off my back

I remembered winsome instances
from faded highschool newspaper photos...
I constructed a room
with my cynicism

Those problems and that pain
just never go away
My will is strong
I will not suffer long
And did I ever acheive suffering

?

What am I now?
A fallen martyr...a sensuous poet
a teacher...a fuckin' fool.	?

I wash away realism with promethean
paragraphs
but to whom do these paragraphs speak?

I set up the question-marks
on the chessboard

I make the first move
The board gathers dust.......

My spectacles become amber
	then obsidian
And I fail to see....
My reasoning clouds all reason
Those damn words still get in the way.

Now

	all forces bend up against my walls
And I sit back and relax

I always hated the schedule
Now I've scheduled seclusion for serenity

Trouble is, I don't like that either.

"They", the "people", the "self righteous
bus crowd", the "customers", the
"coworkers", the "public".

	they're not the enemy

	I just don't feel the need
	to talk to them anymore.

and I'm still sore afraid I'll become
one of them.

I sit down at night alone to write
and I write off another evening

The world has it's needs
And I always thought it needed me
Then I guess I thought it didn't
care
Then I didn't care

Too many troubled monologues
The angel of friendship could not be found
Program a cornerstone for ecstasy

Is this all there is
Me 				Them
		No Us
		?
It never dawns till after dark...
Those who survive will still smile....

I always needed someone to make
me smile

	and that's smile
	not a nervous laugh

Those self righeous assholes fucked
me over for the last time
So I threw them out of my life

Those imperfect rulers bent my mind
so I straightened them out

And now as I
sit down at night alone to write
I realize
Nothing really matters insomuch
as everything matters...
I'm a cinder floating aimlessly
awestruck with the universe

My penhand still wonders how many
times I can write the same
sentence.

Through our poem-craft
		our pain recedes
Till through the stupor
One finds the realities one needs.

An answerer of questions
Questions easy answers
I ask again
And another year strolls by.

				INANITY
				UNANIMITY
				CALAMITY
				SERENDIPTIY
                                      another poem of Sorts.

1984

Link to "The Poem for the New Year 1983"
Link to "The Poem for the New Year 1986"
copyright 1999-2004 by Michael F. Nyiri
ElectricPoetry
AllThingsMike