New Year's Resolutions: Assume Responsibility

Assume responsibility.
Play God.
Be God.
Create, judge, save.
Read and act and don't redact.
Write, save, revise, save, repeat.
Every word is a word of love for the future.
Every poem is a love poem for the future.
Every letter is a love letter to the future.
The end of the story was already written by you before you were born.
Time is strange.
The way is familiar.
See the lamp in the mirror.
Believe in the sun. Stare into the moon.
Think.
Reflect or die.
There are no forks in the road, but there are many twists and turns.
Whatever you are waiting for will come to you.
Whatever you truly seek, you have already found in the future.
You are the pen and the ink and the paper and the words and the reader and the reading and the meaning of the story and shelf in the library where they keep the book and all its sequels, and your name is its title and the subject, which is also who you are and how you feel and why you are exactly what and who and when and how you are as you are. And you are checked out to yourself and due right now, as you have requested yourself to be turned in and checked out to the future.

Roger Chillingworth Sends One More Love Letter

I have to thank you again

In this little Christmas card

For being the perfect girl

To make my poetry hard.

Assume responsibility

For everything I say to thee.

The thing that made you perfect for me

Is, precisely, your unavailability.

Keep on playing hard to get

The way you always did.

Don't ever change your mind

Unless you want have a kid.

Assume responsibility

For everything I say to thee.

I picked you out to be my mother

Because I'm a motherfucker like no other.

I gave you your “A,”

But I'm not rewriting my novel

Before I publish it,

Not even if you grovel.

Assume responsibility

For everything I say to thee.

You made me do it,

So now listen to it.

I offered to escort you

On a Christmas shopping date,

And the offer's still open

If you now want to mate.