makes me grumpy,
no, not because I don't delight
in strings of coloured bulbs
and the flavor of lip chap and hot chocolate sticky,
and the bright eyes of young magickers
but because it seems that whatever the occasion,
any revelry that involves thousands of people
destroys the city, belches post-apocalyptic refuse,
and shoulder-shoves old men, knees small children.
The reason I don't like the Santa Claus Parade
is that once it's over
everything that happened
within the anonymity drug affect of invisible hordes
and the ambulances pulling away
is nobody's fault.
Merry Christmas.

With my heart I picture you in polaroids
tinted blue by my eyes, surrounded by crushed leaves.
In the skipping track of my inner eye
your mouth, the way it moves when you focus
the open-palmed reaching of marimba chorale
and softening of your brow from the vines
of midnight-colour hair.
From many perspectives, again and again,
in the skipping track of my inner eye,
photographs shot with love.