Year of the Cliff-Diving Bull

In the final hours I lure my raw feelings and trap them in an amber bottle. I nurse them with tenderness, lull them with the etherizing smoke of a Cuban cigar then watch them bleed through the tip of a pen. I run my fingers through the wavy hair of a year gasping for one last breath. Naked, I stand in the cold on top of a steep rock. The view is awesome as I carry 2010 precariously close to the precipice. You've been my year, I softly whisper, staring at eternity whirling in her sleepy eyes. I kiss her softly and lay her to rest. Then I tiptoe forward to the very edge, raise my arms high above my head and, like a cocked bow releasing its feathered arrow, I jump off the cliff, soul first. I dive toward the blue sea. At long last I'm free.

The world around remains enslaved by the folly of mad men and women. The lust for power, greed and tyranny dictate the day to day existence, the very destiny of the exasperated masses. The oppressed were further tormented while those living under the illusion of freedom went on with their lives unperturbed. The hungry, the homeless and the poor were stripped naked of their dignity by the cheapness of the rich. Generations aspiring for human honor and personal liberty suffocated from the obnoxiousness of fetid traditions and the defunct morality of ideas long dead. Is it about the world I'm writing or is it about me?



I bullied my way forward like a raging bull in an Andalusian plaza de toros. The smell of blood and urine and earth mixed together, filling my nostrils with the pungence of life and death. Torn between encouraging cheers and dispiriting shouts the arena turned red in my eyes. The matador was a small man like most. He would not stand a chance if it weren't for his picador on horseback and the gang of banderilleros stabbing my back with barbed sticks. Men who hide behind shiny pretense are bereft of courage while honor lies under the hoofs of the beast. Another swig followed by a long drag and the red lessened. I was walking upright again, crossing yet another bridge and burning it like others before. There was an open field ahead and way in the distance the silhouette of a forest emerged and drew my horizon. I walked on.

Happy New Year!