It's a wrap

 The thing about presents is

The only worthwhile thing in them

Is their wrapping, because that's

The only part the giver has actually taken the trouble 

to do themselves

That's why dogs, cats and toddlers play mainly with

The wrapping, it is the best bit

A book, someone else wrote it,

a toy, somebody else thinks that's fun

paper though, wrapping paper

That was touched by the hands of someone who cares

Or feels obliged to give you something

Even if they don't really care and are giving you

The present out of duty, then they at least

wrapped it, put it in a box, maybe wrote a card

That's why it's fun to tear those things up

Because it just shows what a fun waste of time it all is

giving or receiving is really bollocks, but we do it

because it's something to do

And if we didn't it would be boring, and it would probably just be raining

and grey

But you see building things up and destroying them

Is really all life is about

And it is most fun to destroy things someone else has made

or valued

And it is even fun to see them being destroyed 

To an extent

Of course it's easier to understand when it's a cat, a dog or a toddler doing it

But deep down, that's all we really want to do anyway

They just have an excuse, infancy or they're animals

So it's pretty much the same.

Get into Christmas

 Get off my lanterns

And start running the show

Christmas is coming

So don't be slow

Get off my lanterns and get into

winter glow

My head was doing a performance on the chopping block

I walked around the corner and found quite a shock

That the French revolution was an exhibition on shutterstock

And the photographers were the only ones keeping their heads

The rest of them were hopeless lifers and may as well been dead

but no don't talk like that

Get off my lantern

the bare trees are blowing in the wind

Brexmas

 I saw Jesus coming on a donkey

I saw a little boy and a monkey

I saw a felicitous cat

But I'm keeping that under my hat

I saw a fat man wearing red

He had a big hat on his head

And it was just like the Sermon said

But I'm keeping it under wraps

Don't leave it out in plain view

For you know they're dwindling few

To hold the Christmas vigil

For Santa and his jezebel

Have clubbed the real message to death

Still we're all about restraint

And don't do that it's not safe

That's the British society we breed

And why we're losing our creed

But also we've made laws to stifle

Our own cultural traditions are trifles

And tea with the Vicar, 

hardly happens or it's quicker

Than it ever used to be

Not that I'm C of E

I was brought up a Catholic, that's me

But put me in a box

Or tell me to stop

Well then this isn't the country for me 

The mistletoe on the vine

 Oh the stars are cracking in the sky

And the starlings are on the line

The apple trees give up their leaves

For their mistletoe on the vine

I say hello to the crow

I say hi to the pigeon

And the fellow in rags

With the homeless mags

Still the mistletoe grows on the vine

I see the snow

And the winter throws

The warmth and mold wine

But I've nowhere to go

And the starlings stow

Near the mistletoe on the vine

Keep me warm oh Jesus do

The sorrow of the hedgerow is mine

But it's all a glow, the holly tree grows

Like the mistletoe on the vine

Christmas in a nutshell

 Well I tried to crack my walnuts

I tried to eat my cashews

But the fact of the matter man

Is while I try to eschew

My worldly responsibilities

Of academia mediocrities

My macadamia Aristoteles

Was shooing away a squirrel

Keep your Christmas platitudes

I've got my attitudes

You could give me some latitude

But of course you already do

Perhaps it's unresolved trauma

Of some bedroom Nessun dorma

But swap my Nissan for a Korma

And my Kingdom for a horse or two

I've definitely suffered slings and arrows

But unlike Hamlet, I took to wheelbarrows

Less dramatic one could say than murder

Probably more phlegmatic

Easily a more cowardly act it

is it to be a herder than a murderer

Yet we can't all be Shakespeare's Hamlet

 We can't all die on our swords

As Yul Brynner says in the Magnificent Seven

A coward dies a thousand times

A hero only once

Perhaps that's a choice I make

Perhaps I need some more Christmas nuts

  

Get off my lanterns

 Well the lanterns they are hanging

And blowing in the breeze

And I am out there thanking

Jesus saying Jeez

I wish that I could meet ya

I'm alone

But love is sweet

For the friends

The mistletoe came alive

In my car

What no one realized

Was that is was an alien

From outer space

Get off my lanterns I said to it

But it just kept on spreading

Where it did sit

Get off my lanterns

And onto my tree

Show me a land 

Where we all are free

It don't seem like God's here

No more, we've all forgotten 

How to pray

So let's open the barn door

And make what we can of the hay

Get off my lanterns

She said to me

Who me?!, I said with an innocent guile

But in my heart I knew

I was a crocodile

Yes, you, with the head and the eyes

And the hands

Jack of the field

Leave alone my lanterns

But they're shining so brightly

In the dim winter haze

I just want to lie beneath them and laze

Rose Dawn

 On the Rose dawn

Was when Christ was born

And Joy spread through the world

From the desert sands of Jerusalem

To the oceans beds of old Siam

Word was spread, yes word was spread

Jesus Christ was born 

The birth of the great I am

In the rose dawn I saw the light

Like a flock of birds risen in flight

And shoulders of lamb tender to the bite

Born was Christ Jesus and the great I am

Following the flock and flecking the fight

Little blood spots trail along corridors of might

And he carries the cross and he bears a shroud of white

Holiest of spirits come in deepest night

Christmas Swansong

 Talking of politics in the bookshop

And the rights of the individual

That Boris should be shot

The Money made by May for speeches of a kind

And others far too intellectual

They talk on the sofa of Feminism

And communism and dogmatism 

And letting go of leashes 

And losing all control

And I hold on to quiches

And break eggs to make omelettes

Of the friends I did not know

And put all my eggs in a basket of change

And hope to goodness that it doesn't feel strange

Because I have forgotten the weight of coins

In my pocket

And the feel of rain on my skin

When I enjoyed it

And Chocolate

saved up for and bought like a child

Or unwrapped at Christmas

And where has Christmas gone?

Is this its swan song that Morrisons

Are putting Easter Eggs up for sale

On Christmas Eve

What has it come to?

That you can't get served by a human being anymore you must meet a machine

A mechanized weigher

Do it your self

It will save us time and money

It will give us more Leisure time

Baloney

Leisure time is fine if you have the money

So who will have the money?

A state of lazy people who do not want to

Work

Nothing to do all day but pray

Or eat

Hopefully the former

But then their minds can be moulded better

They say

They can evolve like the Latter

Saints of the day

We will become a society of Saints all on our merry way

Doing Yoga saying howdy do neighbour

Oh you are committing a crime?

Well you know there is another way

Try being happy

Maybe that is the cure

But to be happy you must stop being poor

So we are back to the rich government handing out money to their citizens

The decadent society

The happy ones?

But then we look across the water to Eastern Europe

Are they not happier there, yet poorer?

Freedom to follow group traditions that bond each other in a fixed identity

Not this pluralism of mass individualism which

is driven by capitalism and greed and getting rich quick

Getting more and more is the religion

So where is Christmas, where are the Christian values?

Everything changes, they say

You have to let it go

We have ethnic diversity

Well we have enclaves, we have ghettoes

No we have love and strong community and rising above the fear

and hatred

Onwards and upwards like Peter Pan

Onwards and outwards and off to Japan

Can I get a witness to this whiteness or some might call it grey

 

Failing the willingness to key your car

I stole it as I did the gold bar

And ferreted away the science

Of the screw that turned loose heads upon

The windowsill

And kept out good conscience and art at a tick

Because all that fall

Are not in want of a stick

Some who fall are great

And some who mix their chalk and cheese

Are wont to agitate

The grumbling rill where water's fettered course does take

Me back again to scenes that I have missed of late

 

This scene here is grumbling of lorries burring the edges of reason

And trundling armies of surveyors who count and mark each

Fork in the road while simultaneously

Breaking the back of the toad

Who sits and waits in a midnight road

For a miracle to occur

Or an asteroid to strike

Yet no it never does

Or very rarely because

We are stones thrown in space

And space is a glass house

Already shattered yet on the remake

Space part Deux

The big bang' big squeeze

You've got to break some eggs to make

An omelette I believe

And racing drivers take turns to buy ferries instead of Ferraris

And slow snakes squeal in the gears of dead Jewish armies

Who have raised the dead

But not turned over a new leaf

Who have prophesized their dead profits

In a game of stark relief

So, failing this and that I sit and cogitate my fate

To be counting rainbows thrown up

By the leaves I rake

And colour blindness fools me into thinking

Shit is gold

And not everything that washes ashore is jetsam

Which can be sold

But even if it were I'm tired of being told

I can have more of fairy dust when Disney's getting old

And Tinkerbell robbed Peter Pan

When he left open his dustpan

She got out the dumpster dust

and shook herself off

And told him he could sling his hook

And he did with his brother Captain Kid

And they all sailed down the Nile

In search of Cleopatra’s guile

but

Instead found their Mummies in the socks

They had left in draws

Behind their pictures of Santa Claus

Who is getting old not young

Being too long in the tooth

Just like his mum

He has false teeth and sucks his gums

But you can't teach him to suck

Anything else like lemons

The ghost of Christmas past or Brexit's Monster

 There'll be pigs in blankets

huddling cold meat in the street

And chlorinated chicken getting cold chicken feet

The response has been paltry poultry and foul Fowl

And it's fair game for the pheasants

Who follow the plough

And furlongs of furloughs have run the furrows low

As the mechanized industry is on the hill's brow

Like a silouhette of a monster in the dawn's early glow

Well its Brexit's monster now

What the working class wanted were better wages

To get the jobs back that they felt were their heritage

But what they have got are empty shelves and vacancies

Which none of them will fill for they've run out of sympathies

The jobs don't pay high enough they say with disdain

Then doctor Brexit comes at them again and again

This is independent Britain, this your birth right's claim

But who will do the work is Dr Brexit's Monster

He's mean and he's stiff, he's wonky and lacks self control

But his bionic limbs and till fields for vegetables

He can plough furrows, and he can glean lands

And he doesn't mind getting dirt on his hands

Oh sure he's an android, but what did you expect?

From the next generation of workers after Brexit

Few British workers could compete with European toll

And therefore our farming will be under mechanized control

They wanted higher wages, what they got was higher prices

of Food, fuel, electricity and gas in their houses

And if they can get to work at all

They can barely afford their utility bill

Oh it's the revenge of Brexit's monster

Well we treated him like he was a fool,

Writhing around in a small gene pool

With recruitment sharks hanging around his school

Yes he's an office clerk because he don't work with tools

He's got a mental age of 3 but he's learning fast

From his AI brain and his hardwired heart

And his mother board's fried and his fatherland

Smells of fart

Oh he's Brexit's monster

Christmas on the moon

I want to spend Christmas on the moon
Far away from
All this gloom
Give me oceans of rolling sand
Stand me upright, tell me who I am
Kick me sideways
And watch me roll
Always myways but a big dark soul
Going into shadow
Eclipsing and soon
I'll be spending Christmas on the moon

When I am up, the earth is down
Give me no chalice cup in which to drown
Its cold up here but hey women swoon
For a man who lives his days
Up on the moon

I used to wish for witches to burn
But then I read books
And learned that switches can turn
Sometimes they are in phase
And sometimes they yearn
But that's only on Saturdays
By Monday courts adjurn

I have two faces
Two sides to know
One comes when I'm full
The other when I'm low
But feed me Christmas dinner
And I'm yours although
I need some moonshine with it
Or else a worm that glows