new year's climb

happy/unhappy new year 365 'n 1/4 days of expectation, experience and memories

the tree's dead branches, years' dried 

tunneled by wood eating beetles

i'm perched high on aluminum ladder

sketchy equilibrium 

tightrope edge

an' threshold to new year's resolution

of mind's expectant fears' electric charges 

purge through my nerves

consumed with thoughts of the fall

holiday's hollow remnants hundreds of miles far

heartwood bark thick, upcurled and twisted thick 

like shriveled dried buckskin 

taunts the cold ring of steel's threats

in the wind swept empty winter's air 

that mingles with fuel's spent 

oil's blue wisps of smoke 

like incense on my nostrils 

tastes like eggnog and whisky 

on olfactory cells' memories of 

new year's midnight eve

chain saw bites, eating ravenously 

of dead branches dried

precarious potential plunge into

2016 media's news that shrivel's the strength 

of my arms upraised against

the blood flow against gravity's weight

restrains my escape attempts to higher planes

of thought that kills, stifles prospect's 

of new year joy to highest 

blue silhouetted against

sky's infinite height 

sawdust flys scattering cellulose confetti 

like a pagan baptism on a perched sacrifice

like the sparks that fly in every man's life

from birth to the final moment

mind's expectant fears' like electric charges

purge through my nerves

consumed with thoughts of the fall

through the narrow space of 

another new year's gate