Christmas is Coming!



Holiday cheer to all! Reasons to feel festive: I am not at work; I finished Xmas shopping after running around like a crazed animal Friday night and yesterday; I got a very cool Zombie Guide to Zen from my buddy Jamie at work; subversive secret Santa went off without me getting caught out by the Binder Nazi Management (I was the ringleader and we had been forbidden to engage in Secret Santa); my daughter put Lindor Truffles on her Christmas list (she's ten); and Jr. and I just reminisced about when she decorated me as a Christmas tree and took a picture in 1978. I love Christmas! Special thanks to Jogi for sending me a Santa finger puppet to decorate my mangled finger with.

Last weekend was little mama's birthday sleep-over and it went off very well. Heard whispering in the middle of the night, "eat more candy so you don't fall asleep." Pinata was especially fun in our little apt., it broke off it's plastic ring and fell off the mop handle I was dangling it from so I let the girls do a mob attack and then dive on candy and little monster finger puppets to jam into their Enchanted loot bags. We had seen Enchanted earlier and I was pleasantly surprised; it was clever and funny.

I'm trying to think of a Christmas poem other than The Night Before Christmas to post here. I think I will search around and put some good ones below...Joni Mitchell comes immediately to mind...Noel Noel!

River

It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on

But it don't snow here
It stays pretty green
I'm going to make a lot of money
Then I'm going to quit this crazy scene
Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on

I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
I wish I had a river I could skate away on
I made my baby cry

He tried hard to help me
You know, he put me at ease
And he loved me so naughty
Made me weak in the knees
Oh, I wish I had a river I could skate away on

I'm so hard to handle
I'm selfish and I'm sad
Now I've gone and lost the best baby
That I ever had
I wish I had a river I could skate away on

Oh, I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I made my baby say goodbye

It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
I wish I had a river I could skate away on

Joni Mitchell


Back

We try a new drug, a new combination
of drugs, and suddenly
I fall into my life again

like a vole picked up by a storm
then dropped three valleys
and two mountains away from home.

I can find my way back. I know
I will recognize the store
where I used to buy milk and gas.

I remember the house and barn,
the rake, the blue cups and plates,
the Russian novels I loved so much,

and the black silk nightgown
that he once thrust
into the toe of my Christmas stocking.

Jane Kenyon


Napping on the Greyhound

It's Christmas Eve in Texas.
Your bored self is outside the bus
running barefoot on the red shale.
The bus wheezes with the slushy road.
Sage and collapsed yucca, snow snagged
on the barbed-wire fences;
you close one eye.
Outside leaping over boulders,
your bored self stares in at itself sleeping.
The big-headed yucca, helpless as fresh born,
are uncovered in the blizzard.
They are quiet as happy birds.
"Inscrutable inhabitants," say shy visitors
from Planet Zizz. "Very tasteful antennae."

Ruth Stone


Christmas Card to Grace Hartigan


There's no holly, but there is

the glass and granite towers

and the white stone lions

and the pale violet clouds. And

the great tree of balls in

Rockefeller Plaza is public.


Christmas is green and general

like all great works of the

imagination, swelling from minute

private sentiments in the desert,

a wreath around our intimacy

like children's voices in a park.


For red there is our blood

which, like your smile, must be

protected from spilling into

generality by secret meanings,

the lipstick of life hidden

in a handbag against violations.

Christmas is the time of cold air

but in our hearts flames flicker

answeringly, as on old-fashioned

trees. I would rather the house

burn down than our flames go out.


Frank O'Hara