I stand here translucent
Shine through me sunlight
Finish my portrait, colour my grays
Until no shadows remain

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!
.
.
Songs for this:
Absolutely Everybody by Vanessa Amorosi
Rock With You by Traincha
.
.
A Christmas Playlist—because there's 4 days til Christmas
https://daweb.us/xmas/Christmas_28.mp3

Can I bathe in this nocturnal gloom
As night drowns in solitude
Unfurl the ocean to slumber
An infants blanket to sleep
I will carry the moon on my back
Lift it high as midnight returns
Symbiotic, perhaps absurd
Ask if I need sunlight , I do
But this ebony patina is my metallic cocoon




****** dooby doo where are you

Frost caught up
to ghostly fingers;
His December walks
filled dark prophecies,
would he witness
another year
or a month?

In the deep snow,
he knew the answer.

The Necromancer told him,
in her underworldly dreams,
he had once been her true love.
He smirked:
I’m still here
in your words.

eyes have ears, ears have eyes
on self-absorbed nights
the tree of knowledge murmurs in my veins
and poems rush through me with their wild letters
I chase them away with a smile
I am smitten beyond illusions, delusions and other demons
by a 4 am wave, you know
by a 5  am undeciphered dream
by a 6 am reverie, by a letting go
oh, what a sweet incomprehension,
life´s creativity,
your hands anticipating mine

I breath in infamy
Inhale chunky desolate clouds to puff my chest
Live ,love  Ode to Adam and Eve
Ears see , eyes hear
Bloated hearts congeal concocted bliss
Ragged ice in a queer delusion
the curvature of honey, first glance , first kiss

I dreamed we were sailing through rice fields
(they make paper out of rice),
Along a wet brilliance, along mirrors,
Along a marshy archipelago.
In a paper boat, a pale boat,
No splashing could be heard, the oars were so light,
In the mist the boat gets wet, is sinking.
And tiny lights will appear soon.
The shoots of rice, standing out of the water,
Look askance with their Korean eyes - so that
I should understand - an object of love be thou -
They are. A candelabrum of love branches out.
With an ***** song, like a pipe inside a pipe,
(It's natural to love  everyone and immediately too),
Look: memory of oneself is going away
To the bottom like a clumsy dead diver.
Look: the lights are spinning round like rain,
Not falling to the earth - these are souls
Whose inconsolable love
For the Creation and the Creator, the soul will not extinguish.
Oh, how long ago I knew all this -
When I was still a two-legged woman
And now I'm drowning, now I'm lying on the bottom
Of love, like a million-armed octopus.

On the shallow bottom, in the rice fields,
Belonging to earth, water and sky,
With a living longing - and sweet fear -
Those will fall in love with me who think 'I was not there'.

by Elena Shvarts from Contemporary Russian Poetry
translated by Gerald S. Smith

nights revolve in imaginary loops
I am captive inside my lips, inside fingertips
so that I see everything half and half
waves, tears, apples, words
half for me, half for not me, but the other you
I have to keep my hands for myself cause
you have sunshine tattooed on your skin
words are this space where I can breathe
when your hands get concentric

my love, you wear silence like a coat
and i am left drifting like a far-out wave.
the wind tangles leaf and sky.
winter is barely noticed, the moon
is a ghost of forgotten flowers where
the night sings to the starry waters,
sings of our love. everything is sailing
like a ship in a bottle, a kaleidoscope  
of brightness, gothic hill and wildflower
ruin, flowing like a silvery stream.
do you dream of me? do you burn when
the night wraps you in her cloak and the moon
unwinds the waters of the seas?
do you dream of me?

Our shadows follow
mimic our moves
This doppelgänger, this muse
They go away at night
Living another life
Nocturnal nap, waiting for sunrise
They patiently hide, biding their time
Lifelong companion
Silent partner
Thinner version of you

As if like the rushing  of waters;
there is a pouring out
    from the Heavens..

A song..

No..  a voice;

Ah..   a whisper--
from Other-worldly  lips

There is a spirit,  
beautifully aligned;
  A movement..
a trembling of the hips

Floodgates  of Vapor
Floodgates  of Steam
Within the liquid,
Crystalline Luster

Falling down..
like words, Spoken


..Into the Unspoken words
  of an Unspoken Dream