Boxing Day Poems for 2011

(For this year, some poems actually about boxing day. Kind of. There is no boxing; maybe next year.)

i.

Every shop burns a
desperate neon shade

Colours have voices
pleading:   Come      Please
We have things you don't need
We are dying
                         Feed us

We step past the signs to drop
pennies in charity baskets
hearts hard against their need


ii.

Sally sat under the mistletoe
Sally waited for a boy or girl
No one offered a kiss or a smile;
Something dark settled in her to grow.

Sally's Christmas list asked for no pearls,
No Rudolph, no sleigh, no winter snows.
"Only those with souls are worth my while."
Still a sigh from Santa's beard unfurled.

"Even Santa can't --?" She bit back bile.
"Something is missing in you, you know,
I can't hide it; I'm sorry my girl."
So he kissed her; she gave him a smile.


iii.

"What have we done to deserve this?"
she whispered, the presents piled deep
under the tree threatening an avalanche
of bargains tumbling on them.

"We don't need any of it," she said, and he
thought of how Santa was credit cards and
he smiled and whispered: "Fine, I will
take it all back, broken."

And then he swung the golf clubs
twice, sickened by her
sanctimony while the TV
belted out Joy to the World.


iv.

This year they're sharing memories,
unwrapping the past to the present
and letting sadness become laughter.

Code Red

"It's your fault." It's not often to tell a client that, but sometimes it's the truth. 12 person jury, and they convicted him. It was his own fault, really. I call it The Giver's Dilemma. Like the prisoner's, only not alike at all. Essentially, you give gifts. And then you must give better gifts. And better gifts after that. And the gifts given in childhood count the highest, in this regard. We can remember when we got for our eighth birthday and not last year. To whit: if you give shitty gifts, the shit hits the fan.

In his case, 15 years without chance of parole.

I told the jury, "You can't put Santa in a no-fly list! He's the spirit of Christmas! Sure, he has sherry at every single home, but he's never been charged with a DUI yet." It failed. Horribly, miserably, failed. The prosecution got into the obesity epidemic, and my client as a poor role model, and then got into the whereabouts of Mrs. Claus, and the nature of Santa's 'elves'.

I tried to point out the magical aspects, to help salvage my client's dignity, but it never worked. I said: "And then the presents appear!" made more sense than the prosecution's arguments about relativity and a-entropic space/time fields. To which he said: "Oh, yes, and 'a stork brings them' makes more sense to children than nonsense about sexual reproduction."

Did the prosecutor made the naughty often? Don't even go there. It's an invasion of privacy and rights that made the Bush-Cheny administration look like poster boys for libertarianism. Then we had PETA weigh in on flying reindeer, church leaders on how my client had turned the Christmas season from a holiday about someone not born in December in a manger who may not have existed into crass commercialism that netted companies small fortunes and boosted the economy. It was the only part I won.

I tried to appeal to the fact that my client was a mythological entity, but I had no more luck than Creationists on their best days. I appealed to his Sainthood in the end, desperate for anything to sway jurors muttering about scab labour and shoddy toys and the prosecutor -- he just smiled. The scroogiest, grinchiest smile in lawsville, and said: "Your client is a bearded pseudo-saint with an affinity for the color red who makes it his mission to redistribute wealth to the youth that follow his orthodox code of behavior, while at the same time de-emphasizing religion? There is no Santa. He's just a fat, magical Trotsky!"

They laughed all the way though my attempts at a rebuttal. The jury convicted in in less than five minutes for a DUI, terrorism, flying without proper licences, animal abuse, scab labour, using illegal tactics to break up unions. Christ. I can't even recall all of it.

And when it was over, the Prosecutor laughed and left, a halo around his head, and said: "Yes! People wil celebrate Christmas in my name again! Mine, not a pathetic third century saint!" Never did get his name., but damn he argued a good case.

4 Poems on Boxing Day.,..

.... that have nothing to do with boxing. Ah well.



Perfection is
Imperfection, constantly
Changing, becoming
Strange, this



Nameless, we are one.
At peace, we are nothing.
Whole, we are unblemished.
Oh! For a name! A
division from the All,
The illusion of the I
Opens, offering only change.



People who keep a tally of the dead
Are not fit to stand among the living.
Each day the body counts rise higher
And our shadows grow dimmer.
False sympathy braids to false hope
In the spectral TV voice.
“Not your Son --Daughter --Father --Wife --Sister --Brother
Not you. Not yet.”




I need someone else to blame,
Someone else to take this shame.
It’s to hard to bear alone
And I’ve plum ran out of home.

I tried to love you, I wasn’t good enough:
Said I’d be true, but didn’t have enough stuff.

I’m told there’s new fish to discover:
Will someone wake me when the hurtin’s over?
I tried, too hard, to be
The kind of man you wanted to see.

But you said no, though I should see
Should just know that we could never be.