It’ll be an old fashioned Christmas,
with Santa due down the chute.
I bet he Purells his reindeer,
and Lysols his hazmat suit.

It’s an old fashioned Christmas.
We’ll all have on our masks,
and our muffled yuletide carols,
will be just like seasons past.

We’ll observe all the guidelines.
We’ll eat six feet apart.
We’ll have disinfectant under the mistletoe,
and keep safety in our hearts.

Sure, it’s an old fashioned Christmas.
One unique to the times.
The love this year might be careful,
but the feelings are genuine.

Steady, we go along, stable, we seek our comforts.
And beyond us, the rest of everything lives.
Surrounding our dinner tables a conflict festers,
As my father yells across at my uncle about
The hate of our current leaders.
(i leave my eyes at my plate)

Consistent, we see ourselves, ugly, we see another side.
Another side I frequent is a “shooting range”,
Where before the curriculum starts for the year,
We learn how to fight against a shooter inside.
As I learn the thoughts of shakespeare,
And recite the constitution.
(i fear for when the shooting begins again)

Lost in a known life, I cower beneath those who stood taller.
The fervent few who knew history and what cycles it spawned.
The powerful ‘leaders’ who promised a better tomorrow,
Corrupted by constitution, and empirical deduction.
We stand side by side as family in the face of terror-
Be it red, blue, donkey or elephant.
(i know the lies they spread and still follow synced)


Oblivious we march in protest to ourselves.
Not knowing the start or how our story began.
Impervious to outside influence we are herded into ideologie,
And fed the grass and grains of knowledge warped into ‘morality’
Undead beliefs cycle themselves to those of the generational heir,
And respawns in the minds of those too cowardly to accept something else.
Fact and fiction morph into each other-
And grey becomes all we can see.
(blinded by a light gray scaled, i see myself as no one and everyone as the same)

My cat’s become so critical
of the pieces that I write
he kneads to express his opinion
and he always thinks he’s right.

He twitches his ear-itation
if I don't write in Senryus.
If what I write displeases him
he’s under the bed for refuge.

He’s worse than many teachers -
his reviews are seldom neutered -
he pointedly wags that twitchy tail
or cat-calls disapproval.

He laid across my laptop
for half the afternoon
‘til I promised an ode to tuna
which earned purrs of hallelujah!

he would start whistling
Very random
and very loud

even at night in bed

and stopping him was
very much a
gamble

The caterpillar-like
stitches on
his wife’s arm were a testimony
to that

He’s never been the same
since his head injury
Poor fellow just had the terrible,
terrible luck to
walk underneath an overpass while
some teenagers were throwing
big rocks for fun

Now he kept calling the emergency
number and crying that
his wife had
gone missing when she’d be just
in the other room or at work

The neighbors filed
noise complaints
because of
his nightly whistling
and apparently he no longer knew
how to use the
toilet paper. He always smelled
and it was worse when
he climbed in bed
besides his wife

It was hell
and hell broke people
and tonight again he started whistling
and woke her up
and as a response
she started whistling as well

They whistled together
in the dark
under the covers
and held hands and smiled
after so long

I’m overthinking,
tired of the endless waiting,
about to blow up.

Even my mom sees it.
She starts some cutting remark
only to pull it back.

Me: "Argh! I have this anger, just below the surface."
My brother: "Uhh, it's not that far below the surface."

velvet rose sunsets
in between the sheets
me and you and our cassettes  
cruising in the front seats