Special Feature: Selected Poems for Year-End Reflections

My Dear Readers/Fellow Poets:

Today is the last day of 2023, a year of living dangerously for many people around the world. According to the Geneva Academy, there are more than 110 armed conflicts in the world. The economic stresses and sociopolitical instability these conflicts and financial policies have caused are enormous.

I would like to share with you the following haiku and tanka for your imagination and reflections, in the hope of ringing out the old/bad and ringing in the new/changing.

I look at the sky

having lost another year ...

midnight fireworks

Chen-ou liu

This Brave New World, CXXXV 

firework after firework

as the clock has struck midnight

rainbow flowers

light up Toronto's sky

unlike the one over Gaza

Chen-ou Liu

loneliness

after the fireworks

a falling star

Masaoka Shiki

my home town

in a new year's dream

tears

Issa

This Brave New World, CXXXVI

for 12-year-old Palestinian girl, Layan Abu Kuwaik

my home town

in a new year's dream

sun-dappled hills

Chen-ou Liu

FYI: Democracy Now, Jan.2 : Death Toll in Gaza Tops 22,000 as Biden Bypasses Congress to Send More Munitions to Israel

...God willing, in 2024, I wish when I wake up on January 1st to discover that this was all a dream, to wake up at home on January 1st, for the war to end, for our suffering to end, for this tragedy to end...

This Brave New World, CXXXVII

another year

amidst screaming sirens ...

sunflowers

on the bomb shelter wall

no longer noticed

Chen-ou Liu

New Year’s Day

looking back I am lonely

as an autumn evening

Basho

first dream of the new year:

we buy back our wedding rings 

from the pawn shop 

Steliana Cristina Voicu

in five-seven-five

I compact confusing thoughts ...

New Year's morning dew

Damir Janjalija

the new year

begins with sky rockets

like them

who can tell

where we will land

Beverley George

All the best for the new year ahead

Chen-ou

Added: This Brave New World, CXXXVIII

air raid sirens ...

Ukraine is alive, Ukraine fights

again at sunrise

FYI: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's New Year Address: Ukraine is alive. Ukraine lives. Ukraine fights. Ukraine advances, Ukraine overcomes the path. Ukraine gains. Ukraine works. Ukraine exists. And all together, this is not a New Year's miracle, not a fairy tale, not magic, but the merit of each of you.

Added: reading between the lives and writing between the lines, LXXXI

anything new?

the Christmas tree off

to be mulched

and the champagne gone flat 

after New Year's fireworks

FYI: This could be read as a sequel to the following:

shelling peas --

each passing year

like the one before

tinywords, Dec. 29 2023

Sanjuktaa

Added: This Brave New World, CXXXIX

written in response to Barbie, the highest-grossing film of 2023

home, sweet home

in a new year's dream

pink-lit Barbie Land