Protracted Metrical Hermeneutic Festivities
As Christmas nears I lift my pen
To liberate each sheep
And as Garuda's angels sing
I lay me down to sleep
Confident that when I wake
The heavens and the earth will shake
But I won't hear a peep
But yet ... to hear it once again
I'll use my hearing aid
Imparting an unearthly ring
An eerie cavalcade
Loping through the frontal lobe
To circumnavigate the globe
In cranial parade
And yet, before the last Amen
Resounds o'er hill and shore
For every single living thing
I will admit it -- I'm a bore!
Perhaps to you this is no shock
But now for me the ticking clock
Grows harder to ignore
As Christmas nears my mind grows dim
With wassailing o'ercome
I've filled the flagons to the brim
With turpentine and rum
Dancing drunkwise down the street
Tripping over Santa's feet
And landing on my tum
Once in Welwyn Garden City
Stood a lonely petrol pump
On a forecourt dark and gritty
Near the disused oil sump
Glist'ning with benzolish sheen
Gleaming like a soup tureen
On the Council dump
In this like place I bore my breast
My fervent hopes take wing
And like the cuckoo in the nest
I rouse myself to sing
Of those that should have had my place
Who disappeared without a trace
Of Christmas, White, by Bing
Of reindeer with a crimson snout
The less that's said, the better
Ditto, their owner, old and stout
That wily elf-begetter
Who fills a stocking well, they say
(or else a fur-lined negligée)
To make his dreams get wetter
And thus, for Twelve benighted days
We'll gorge ourselves and vow
To live on frugal beans and maize
And stay quite sober - how?
And sing, in hats of marzipan
While gnawing at the pemmican
Of aeons far from now
But hark, ye angels! Day Thirteen
Will dawn with leaden sky
And trees that once were evergreen
Will wither by and by
And God (coughing behind his hand)
Will say "You'll never understand
No matter how I try."
Contributors: | KT, Roland, Canon Golightly, Elizabeth, P, Grayman, TG, The Agent Apsley, Bop, Sir Garfield Lineker. |
Poem finished: | 3rd January 2000. |