Monday, December 25, 2017

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 5th 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

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