When the Yule Tree Dies
Christmas is coming but your wallet's lost its fat. Dividends suspended from the stock investor's hat. Lost beyond a rainbow to the dollar scandal woes. "PLEASE DEPOSIT MONEY OR THE BANK WILL SOON FORECLOSE!"
Wife has left, she took the kids, your car and house as well, leaving you court-ordered in an out of town motel. Burger costs you twenty but a fiver gets you bread; nothing but a whiskey slows the spinning of your head.
Shops all decorated, there are Santas every where, glitzy lights and slogans getting grander every year. Gifts abound for everyone when credit’s not on hold; easy if you still possessed your magic card of gold.
Christmas is coming, hear the sleigh bells ring, listen to the carols that the choir children sing. Smell the roasting turkey in their loving cozy homes, sparing not a dollar for the down and out alone.
Jesus walks beside you yet the streets are cold and wet shuffling through the subway you’re a ghost wracked in regret. What is Christmas anyway for one who has no friends? What does "sorry" mean to those who cannot make amends?
Now there is an off-ramp that you never took before leading to a ghetto where the ravages of war rest upon a nation that has lost the will to feed all her orphaned children in the gutters of her greed singing;
"Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat, Please to put a penny in the old man's hat. If you have no penny, then a ha-penny will do. If you have no ha-penny, then God Bless You!"
© WW Schwim 10 December 2009
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