below are a few pics taken at christmas. the toys nicholas is playing with are his favorites. each one talks, sings and makes all kinds of racket. in fact, contemporary toys for kids now all seem to talk and/or sing. which kinda freaks me out. i half expect a toy to start talking back a la some kind of horror flick. makes the skin creep, really, when putting together a few of those toys they would moan, yawn and say, 'oh hi.' what's next, artificial intelligence?

been a crazy, weird, wild and wonderful year, my first year as a new poet/father. the world is fucked, it seems, but the individuals i know as friends are a restorative from the insanity that seems to be our lot. the same for the poets i've been reading. for example, been marveling at the exuberant optimism evident in berrigan's work. is it a matter of temperament, or is it hard-won?

at any rate, i've always loved the changing of years. poetry is a way, i think, to make all time the present. not by stopping or freezing time, but simply by using the fields of language that make contemporaneous the writer past and present, with the reader past and present, that in turn, makes a future that remains unknown, but when it does arrive, as it always does, it become knowable.

or something to that effect. as the great shaft would say, sheeeeiiit!

so then, as chinaski does at the end of barfly, i raise a glass and toast all my friends.

happy new year