Week+Nine

=Week Nine =

So, it's Christmas, right? Well, it's also Hanukkah and Kwanza and many other cultural shades of Christmas-like holidays. Write a poem about this time of family, over-eating, consuming plastic goods that will probably end up in the Ocean, traveling, oh, and did I mention consumption--there's also hope and love and all of that kind of stuff.

He smelled like cigarettes. Which is what I hate If a man wants to kill himself I figure its his life and he’s crashed enough beer bottles to know when things shatter and if its life thats next then I will not stand between you and the abyss. But if your gonna die, at least pick a way that doesn’t leave you smelling like a trucker stop. Which is what I would have told the canvas jacket baseball cap soap-mouther, if he had asked me. If he had asked me I could have told him I knew a guy who died like he might and I could do your math homework and I knew that a dactyl isn’t a dinosaur and that mark twain was a pen name and you don’t wash your hair with newtonian foam. Thats why I studied hard in high school and I want to go to college, right? But I’ll tell you a funny thing about us. We don’t ask. He’s got a laptop and you’ve got an iPhone and together we can parse the universe. In a world where top secret files wikileak through GaGa CDs its miracle your 5 year olds aren’t sending my husbands to war. Yet Scholar’s come like tootsie rolls, dime a dozen at the Harvard corner store, and just in, you can buy online. So eat up. That’s why he didn’t ask. And I’m glad he didn’t. Because I stand here and tell you I saw a miracle brothers, like parting the sea of music as I pulled out the plasma headphones and listened to what that canvas boy said. He said You don’t know me! Just because my parents smoke and I smell like I’m the sinner. And still reeling from Adam’s transgression his friend asks him what he wants for Christmas this year and momentarily parted from the punk rock white noise I hear him say truth you don’t unwrap from thesis wax paper. What I want for christmas my parents can’t give me. I thought I wanted a long board. And now I just want two people I’ve never met before to stop smoking. I suppose this is why they call it the miracle of christmas And I turned off the music. Ian "Weezer" Hawkes

// Christmas Villanelle //

One moth-eaten man passed on Christmas morn Never had a being dried their eyes and ceased to think Then there was a scream and a baby was born

Wondering why those shoes were never worn Into a puddle of crystalized wants we lie and sink One moth-eaten man passed on Christmas morn

Tinsel-bright grins to every arbor we adorn Heart and stars lift and eyes twinkle and wink, Then there was a scream and a baby was born

She says it is the worst time for families freshly torn While the lights on the hedge on, and off blink One moth-eaten man passed on Christmas morn

Under the rug goes all reason to mourn Where crystal glasses shatter instead of clink Then there was a scream and a baby was born

Is it unexpected to prick oneself on poinsettia's thorn Whilst ornamenting the wire of duality’s brink One moth-eaten man passed on Christmas morn Then there was a scream and a baby was born.

// -megan "junkie beanie" mitchell //

Christmas.

I think it should be called Santapaloosa Day.

Isn't it his birthday? Santa's birthday?.

Why else would we give presents on Christmas?.. oh I'm sorry. Santapaloosa Day.

Turning 2010 I presume.

That jolly old man.

Happy birthday Santa, and have a happy Santapaloosa Day everyone!

-Sarah "I already did a Christmas poem, so this is what you get! Lol, I did this in 5 seconds" Kennedy