Showing posts with label christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label christmas. Show all posts

Yule Be Back

A portal opened in my lounge
sometime in mid-November.
A velvet wrinkle overlapped and
time’s quilt was oddly angled.
Up went the tree!
Up went the lights!
The glorious windows
dressed in party clothes.
Stair rods and banisters
festoons and fragrances
that speak of feasts and warming spices.
Inviting glows and cosy stories
by torchlight.

Outside
conker battles finalise into
en of season skirmishes.
Guys succumbed to elemental distress
and the stench of rotting pumpkin corpses
rang from the town in
jubilant and guttural rowdy shouts
as cold breath caught in
over confident throats.

As a penalty for this
badly ironed chronological coverlet
a fine was set
and the time was taken back.

With bated breath in stasis
the presents waited.
The house waited.

In the missing time a place was found for everything
and having no time to dally in,
everything went to its place.
Reset for rambunctious rabble’s return.
For music and pictures and stories and tea.
For dinosaurs and Harryhausen, Nick Cave and walks by the sea.

Longing for the normal passage of time.
Smooth, wrinkle.


The house waits.

Snow Globe

At Christmas families are reunited
Even those members you’d prefer weren’t invited
We stress over food, presents and reindeer sighted
                Then convince ourselves it’s a holiday.
When recalling childhood memories, though
It’s not the obtrusive fairy light glow
Or even going out to play in the snow;
                These aren’t the sensations that stay.
It’s watching the joy on small surprised faces
And hiding presents in imaginative places.
It’s still (in March) finding pine needle traces
                And four o clock starts on the day.
And as the wheel turns with each passing year
And fewer of the older generation are here
Best wishes seem bluer and much less sincere
At least, it can feel that way.
Atheists exercise gluttonous proclivity
While Christians celebrate the nativity
And merchants are anxious about consumer inactivity
                And old folk on their own alone stay.
Perhaps instead of the giving of stuff
We should realize the giving of time is enough
Spend some of your working with folk sleeping rough
                Prevent police from taking their things away.
Each year the Belarusian children come
For a time of laughter and presents and fun
Without your support this could never be done
                This is the spirit of the season at play.
Give what is needed and where it’s deserved
Forget any grudges, forgive what’s occurred
Nurture warm feelings when they are stirred

                Don’t let sadness turn red and green memories grey.

Open Skies

I’ve tried to explain this rootless of times
but all come befuddled like passions of crimes
and all I convey seems like paranoia
when all it is really is negative joy. A
simple expression of gutfelt pure feeling
seems hollow and somehow devoid of true meaning.
You see with this gift of your love and your trust
you left my iron-clad heart out to rust.
Invincible I marauded through days
giving no thought to next week, tomorrow a haze.
Entirely reckless and feckless – just living.
What happened just happened. What didn’t, just didn’t.
I hate you for all that you force me to feel.
I have to make plans now, be cautious and deal
with mundanous housework and bills and the fear
that one day I’ll wake up and you won’t be here.
I’m so terrified of the day that will come
when the imperfect duo of us will be one
broken automaton, loverless lover,
with no one to run to, to hide and take cover.
No sanctuary, haven or reason to be
the people we both urge the other to be.
Soul-image, my animus, all I adore:
you make me feel vulnerable, need I say more?
I hate that I love you. Our crazy dynamic
leaves me open to loneliness, heartbreak and panic
and yet I can’t help it. For all of my fear
I want what scares me. Does this statement seem mere
-ly a flimsical knock-off, a gesture at most,
a wine-driven-10-to-12-red-faced-man’s boast?
It’s not, I assure you. It’s all I can give.
You are my reason to wake up. To live.
And all that I have and all that I do
it’s all just a heart-unbroke tribute to you.
Your patience, your actions, your strength and just you
make me fear for the future. Question: just who
would open themselves to a lifetime of this
uncomfortable happiness, blinkerless bliss?
The me you created with that first kiss:
This misgiving Mrs from misanthrope Miss.