If you’re looking for yuletide cynicism here,
you’re shopping in the wrong place.

This is New York City’s time of year.
It’s stood the test of time and it fairly sparkles,
proving that the ordinary can be extraordinary.
With the right lighting.

Lisa’s (parent’s) apartment glitters like our promised heaven on high.
When we left at Thanksgiving, Michael (Lisa’s dad) had the concierge
service stressed, toting boxes of decorations up from their storage area.
When I waved my goodbyes, he appeared to be wrestling an octopus of
cool-white fairy lights into submission. Now everything glitters pyrite bright.

Our holiday time is limited—and this is our chance to unwind—so we’re
selective about what we decide to embrace. For instance, there was a sale
at Michael Kors where, no big deal, I got a pair of brogue, black
leather wingtips that’ll be straight fire with a little black dress.
The bargains were so good that I decided the store must be a drug front.
Not that I’m complaining. Do I ever complain? Nope, I’m stoic.

Like Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, Lisa and I’ve
been “testing the product” of Manhattan's club scene.
We’re searching diligently for the new and unfamiliar.

When it comes to picking which clubs we want to visit,
Charles, our driver and escort (a retired NYPD cop),
has gone as far as to suggest, we’re “out of our depth,”
and refused to let us even try one or two DJ’d, pop-up clubs
in Queens that were getting a lot of heat and likes.
“Roosevelt Avenue is the new 42nd Street,” he’d said.
What does that even mean??
Indignant silence

Anyway,
I hope Christmas finds you all merry and bright and that your holidays—whichever you celebrate— are carnivals of food, music, friendship and love—for those are the luxuries that count the most.
Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Merry Kwanzaa, Happy Festivus!
.
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Songs for this:
Absolutely Everybody by Vanessa Amorosi
Rock With You by Traincha
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A Christmas Playlist—because there's 4 days til Christmas
https://daweb.us/xmas/Christmas_28.mp3

the soul of joy grows in circles
it glitters in children's cheeks
singing together washes away
the momentum of nonsense
I contemplate the unknown,
the right proportion of light of darkness
their breath kept in balance,
the golden harvest of hearts,
of hours
the fir tree gives away
some scent, some wonder

Merry Christmas

Today I will hang my winter curtains
thick and soft as a cat's full belly,
December throw your gauntlet
full blast the rain, the wind can roar
they will not step inside my door,
for every sound becomes a purr
when I have donned my seasonal fur

To be a poet
is not to burn the paper with your words
but to be heard,
when ink and page and pen are embers
it is the beauty one remembers

To leave this small town, I would dare,
If courage found its way to me.
A wasteland's blue and brown despair,
Cogs turning, struts of industry.

For years I toiled, for years I ran,
The pace relentless, never slowed.
Yet once again, here I began,
Back at the end of the road.

We are but sand upon the waves,
sliding slowly until the night arrives.
But every step we take together
leaves footprints that can live for centuries.

I was to catch her
in  the rye
Maybe maybe
say goodbye

Alex stood naked
cloaked in orange
singing shivers
in the rain

We all know
how the story goes
So it goes
So on it goes

El Bib the acronym
To be read
back and forth
from end to end

Huckleberries
the river flows
down wrong paths
Big Jim he knows

I was the phoney
in the rye
A clockwork orange
in disguise