day THREE HUNDRED and FORTY

As visions of sugar plums dance in your heads....i offer another oldie but "goodie" for this day THREE HUNDRED and FORTY 

walking 5^th avenue christmas blues

santa trump nazis

blasting hate talk

and yuletide jingles

out of unseasonably warm

rolled down windows

honking horns

an orchestra or gridlock and anger

their gray faces melting faster than polar ice caps

sixty degrees in december

feels more like columbus day

the sweat collects in my boots and on my balls

forty one years on this boiling planet

forty one christmas seasons

is enough to make anyone hate anything

yearn for something just a little bit more subtle

as the overworked honk

and honk and honk and honk

scream tender mercies into the water-tipped air

as if it’ll get them anywhere faster

on these clogged corrupted streets

i think they should put electric shocks on car horns

meaning if you’re gonna use it

you must really mean it

but on the sidewalk chalk people move like slugs

in the dance of jingle bells blaring out of store fronts

old people shuffle taking last steps

babies wobble taking first ones

everyone getting in my way

and i’ve got nothing to blast them with

except another futile sigh and the wane promise of a new year

forty one spins and i’ll probably end up dead

on the shitter at work in full-on santa party hat mode

what years i wouldn’t give up

for a little bit of eternal sleep

moving along this baklava-scented avenue

where every world collides

menorahchristmastreefatjollyelfkwanzaa

passing papaya box mountains

and avocado sculptures made for god

some drunk collapses into the middle of the intersection

curls up busted like islamic calligraphy

and i swear

i daydreamed

a new america.            

--John Grochalski                         12.11.15