ring out wild bells

With a new year comes a new decade comes short-lived expectations that things will get better, somehow. Hence the resolutions, so easily broken, the rituals across the globe that represent a desire for things to improve. Or at least, not get worse.

A poll I read at the beginning of the month asking how much store people put in resolutions showed that fully 80% thought they were worthless, at best. The frantic and increasingly spectacular New Year's Eve celebrations substitute visual distraction for meaning, but the hollowness of its repetition cannot be hidden. A lazy and bored mainstream media fails at every opportunity to ask relevant questions about the unfolding circus. Is it any wonder that folks are more cynical?

i am reminded of the season
by the crackle of a christmas beetle
under a drunk's blind heel.