The week between Christmas

A semi-recurring poem by Keith McLendon

Amid the week after Christmas,

piles of wrapping in bags,

shiny paper and boxes in trash with the tags.

Sad little scissors sit broken and bent,

from clamshell packaging--they don’t make a dent.

The lights are still sparkly, still light up the town,

but pretty soon work begins in taking them down.

Kids run around ‘cause they’re still out of schools,

having a good old time while acting the fools.

But the tots are forlorn from here to Hoboken,

Christmas is gone and their new toys are broken.

Uncles and Aunts and those other relations,

bid farewell and return from their mini vacations.

Santa lays down and sighs in relief,

“What a joy!” he exclaims, “To get off my feet!”

The elves are euphoric, full of songs and of rhyme,

for their paychecks are ripe with much overtime.

Reindeer, still weary from their

round-the-world flight,

laugh about poop on your roof left in the night.

We saw that white Christmas, while so very nice,

is now all for nothing but a pain-in-the-ice.

What we look for now is the New Years to come,

wild parties abound, with champagne

and spiced rum.

A night known to ruin our memory’s retentions,

from drinks that consist of colored suspensions.

Midnight rings the end of our holiday season,

but many still drink their way beyond reason.

We try to head home (don’t drive--take a cab),

to find we can only crawl like a crab.

Onto the bed we fall like a pin...

“Hey, why is the room starting to spin?”

The New Year is born and at

Bowl games we’ll gaze,

through a headachy red shade of hangover haze.

We’d keep resolutions if we could

guess what they were,

we know that we made them,

but now we’re not sure.

To exercise, we think, let’s give it a shot.

but then again, we know, probably not.

Maybe we thought to go and quit smoking,

Yeah, right. man, who the hell are we joking?

Go to a shrink for our personality problems?

They’d lock us away if they met all our goblins!

So at the end of the day what do we do?

Same we did last year ... see the year through.

 

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