If and Only If...

If you can keep your head, when all around you,
Are losing their heads over scotch and rum, and blaming it on you
If you can trust yourself, when all cops and bouncers doubt you,
Still try hard enough to prove you aren’t done, still pose sober
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait in the big line outside the dance club,
And not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about being served meat over veggies, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated by other men for dancing with style,
Don’t give way to hating,

If you can dream—and not make those drinks your master;
If you can think—even after rounds and rounds of partying,
If you can meet with vodka and tequila at the bar,
And treat those two imposters just the same,
If you can drink enough, to hear the truth you've spoken
(to your wife), that you haven’t had more than two glasses
Or watch the things around you without breaking them,
And stoop and build some good relationships with a smile,
If you can make one heap of all your tequila glasses,
And risk it on one more glass of pitch-and-toss
Collapse them, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breath, when you are asked for a DUI test,

If you can force your heart, nerve and sinew,
If you can greet everyone at the dance hall and still be fine,
If neither friends, foes, bartenders, waitresses, wives, spouse can hurt you,
If all women count with you, but none know your wife,
If you can fill those unforgiving 6 minutes, with
12 pieces of REDHOT wings at Buffalo Wing House,
If you can hold on, till the clock strikes 00:00:00 and can still
Wish every person next to you, 
“ a Very Happy and Prosperous New Year 2014… “
Yours is the Night and everything that is part of 2014
And --- which could be even more ---
You’ll be a Man, my brother!

New Year resolution 2014

No more new resolutions for the year,

Life begins once again on the low gear.
I won’t be here; yet I won’t be gone,
Got to work, breaking New year’s dawn.

Another year gone, now one year older,

2013 goes quietly in my archive folder,
Didn’t turn wiser, but saved memories;
Life subsists on e-diaries or lost histories.

Newer challenges and more new goals,

Need to stop writing them on toilet rolls,
Those that I never read, nor like to see,
When all is done, I am sure, you all agree.

More things to do; added to my task lists,

There is not one template that pre-exists,
You plan for one; you end doing the other,
Replan, rewrite all over; my dear brother.

Then a year would come, with December,

Then you start thinking; and remember,
You succeed in finding the list; all still blank,
Your dollars on e-cloud; but zero in bank!

I hate new years and all that are inspiring,

I am so really looking forward to retiring,
Not with dollars, plastics and e-accounts,
But with no-guilt-in-life that really counts.

Human as I am, breathing, burying, caring,

As life goes by earning, winning, un-sharing,
Today, the only checklist, that I will need,
Take it out, one at a time, life’s rising weed.

No plans work; no checklist will do things,

With life tangling between invisible strings,
Of temptations, fears, doubts and losses,
A puppet by nature, loitering race horses!

Little dreams; positive plans, smaller goals,

Goals on no toilet rolls, nor with loopholes,
Setting ones that work, ones that are real,
Will only mark those ones that really appeal.

No more new resolutions for the year,

Life must begin once again on the low gear.
I won’t be here long; yet I won’t be gone,
Got to work, breaking New year’s dawn.