Resolutions, the Relationship, the Passing of the Day, Falling Away

Resolutions   New Year’s resolutions are meant to be broken as soon as we realize that deprivation and muscle strain are not our natural state, and that a comforted body yields placidity of mind.     The Relationship I can only think of you with exasperation at the challenging mix of slick and stinging ways that make you my cactus.         The Passing of the Day   In the moment that sunlight shrivels the day rebukes me for wallowing in the known and hiding in the comfortable, for spurning those inappropriate, and dodging alien ideas.     But the night reassures me, with a recorded manifesto that I already know by heart. I can shutter my soul, and face tomorrow’s day knowing it will be unchanged.       Falling Away Love is stepped cliffs Of willingness to suffer. Sheer drops from obsession to indifference. The tiny mesa top holds less than a score For whom I would give up my self. Then a free fall to friends and relatives Who are given affection and time And a precipice further down Acquaintances are doled out words. And at chasm bottom are strangers Who receive pro forma prayers and grudged money. It’s impossible to love all of humanity When I merely like myself.