I wash the scent off of 2011,
an Oscar Wilde saint with a past,
the lines, by El Greco, all black.
It's time, to leave behind
some hostages of the mind:
bowling in Manhattan, swimming in the Yucatan,
visiting psych wards and tooth removers,
humid graduations and ice-cold reunions,
afternoon mescal in the West, St. Germaine back East,
the cheers for the Bruins and for De Vere on the silver screen,
the elegies for capitalism and democracy,
well-made socks and the NC double A,
caught in the job creators pepper spray,
praising Aaron Rodgers and Scott Walker,
Stieg Larsson and Julian Assange,
ragtime tornadoes, fracking earthquakes, nuclear tsumanis
a self-immolation before a courthouse in New Hampshire,
the epic fail of sovereigns, the credit event bazookas,
the black swan contagions of a civilization
that can no longer stomach the gentlest of truths.
This was the year we glimpsed the mirror behind the curtain
but only to see if our eyes were open,
for the real work ahead, for all of us now
is go stark raving sane to discover the treasure
of what we have been all this time,
beyond El Greco's tarnished saints
or Caravaggio's lucent sinners,
the thing we are always urging us towards,
forever mistaken but never wrong,
the lurch through the cleansing hurricane
to the nothing inside, all eyes.
