The Christmas Epitaph

 

What are you, Christmas?

Building up your legendary come-back year by year,

Always on the last three months,

In commercials,

through verbal anticipation,                        in decorated streets,

On joyful wrappings                                            dazzling lights                                                     

glitters around me

What are you, now?

a volcano day

 

jolly arrangements of lava

 

Las Vegas eruptions?

 

What have you been?

What have you been for them peoples?

What have you been for me?

You have been something for my house, I must admit.

But nothing, nothing for my room!

You have done nothing, nothing for my soul,

You have done nil, nil for my health!

 

What art thou, Christmas?

Would I hear about you in Shakespearean riddles?

In a Freudian myth?

Are you registered in the Jungian archetypes list?

25^th December, I know, you have been that,

That has been you,

But for that date what have you done?

Have you enhanced it, made it merrier?

For some, yes. Even perhaps for many a western world,

With so many turkeys in distress.

You have enchanted it.

25^th December, a dolly charcoal burning of my thoughts.

 

But I cannot forget.

No, no, nothing can make me forget.

25^th December.

“Is your name Christos?”

I can’t forget.

They don’t let me forget.

“Wow!  Today is your name day!”

And I should be so happy.

Christmas, the merry lolly dolly day tailored to my being.

And what have you done for me, my soul, my mind, my place inside my oversized shoes?

What have you done for my omni-ceased inspiration during these days of fixed bliss?

Nothing, nothing for my ever leaking perspiration over wishes for my damned name

Christos

Christmas

 chrisimon

chrisma

All Greek creeks creeping inside my red veins.

 

What are you, Christmas?

Winter, shouldn’t my complexion whiten whither ado?

But like the shadow of a dead Jesus epitaph view

 in a church yard

 three months later just before Easter,

as I pass under it,

I am darker as I approach this weird Christmas day,

My skin is darker

the lava - the charcoal – the decorations – the wish –

the wish is a curse – I know now!

I KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN!

 

Baptizing me to the rituals of death,

Indeed, Christmas, what have you done for my birth

and what for my long-gone mirth?