The year is ending,

But time carries on.

As do madness and cupidity.

Our calendered demarcations

Do not part our viciousness

From our viciousness.

Come the “new year,”

We will continue to despoil

The earth and trample

The lives of billions

To whom calendars mean nothing.

The seas will rise,

The forests will burn,

But our Manhattans will

Not heed the call of doom.

The Pharoas of the day

Will pile more meat on

Banquet tables, more bombs

In armouries, more profits

In banks, more laws to crush

The underdog.

But the Covids will come

And the vaccines will run out.

The year-end but hastens us

To the last point of another earth

Era, and no chip we invent

Will do anything but further

Our descent in a relentless motion

To the bottom of the ocean.

What remains will once again

Return to creatures of the wild.

Almanacs and calendars, God

And Darwin would have all died.

May be some mad Lear atop

An undersea cliff will remain to

Shake his locks and sing praises

To the bards whose relegation

Through the ages would he declaim

As having brought the blue globe to shards.

---