Why is it that some parents
Think that it's okay
To name their children Jesus
If they're born on Christmas day?

They name their children badly
Christmas names just do not fit
Imagine Frosty Watanabe
I bet he feels a twit

There's rules that must be followed
Jesus is not the name to use
No matter when your kid was born
He's not the leader of the Jews

We knew a J.C. Fitzmorris
When I was a kid in school
Said his name was Jesus Christ
To us, that wasn't cool

Poor J.C. took a beating
When he said that name of his
You see, no one did believe him
I felt so sorry for old Fitz

Holly Berry, Frosty
Snowflake and the rest
Are just not names for children
These names just aren't the best

Your child will just hate you
If you name them by the season
A friend of mine named Cupid
Is in therapy for this reason

So, please don't name them Jesus
Rudolph, Frosty, even Nick
There is only ever one of these
And your kid will feel a ****

But, if one night three months from now
The Holy Ghost pays you a visit
I think Jesus might be a good name
It's not so bad now...is it?

And every eight years i became someone else, it was as though i was a pilot, living vicariously through my-selves, until

one stuck

And began decaying in a foray of dying cells

Mucked

In gray hairs, and ridged nails

Locked thoughts and rituals

Blinding me
Binding me
Writhing in me

From the lights of tomorrow

I tried to find peace, in my reduction to ashes

Soundless peace

Humming me to sleep

In the eve of my memory to the masses

Stashed in caskets and data logs

Crashed in depressive fog

And with time

I'm completely gone

With time

Nations will rise and fall

Land following suit

Giving way to life within a womb of the most delicate of wounds where a flower grew

Where life is born anew
Cycling through the blessings

Hoping something catches

I'll give you my thoughts for a penny.

Only a penny, because they're certainly not worth a nickel, five cents for the five fingers I'll frequently run along my collarbones, imagining myself imagining the moment when you did the same, all that's left now is the ghost of your fingers, negative space.

Not worth a dime. A dime I'll use to buy a caramel that'll glue my teeth together and trap the words I know I'll regret later on.

The sweetness of my unsaid words will linger for hours.

Not worth a quarter, 25, enough for all my fingers and toes, and one more for the hand that seems to linger around my throat, incarcerating monologues I can't seem to make anyone understand.

Certainly not worth a dollar, a dollar I'd use to buy sour patch kids, partly because I know they're your favorite, (you can appreciate the way they'll sting your tongue after a while, and the oxymoron living in the sour sugar that coats them), and partly because I sure am sour, and after all, I'm only a kid.

My friend published a book
of collected Scots Proverbs.
200 pages and more, filled
with countless ways of saying
"Don't show off."

And that precious wisdom,
generations in the making
percolated through smokey thatch
in dismal dripping glens,

Tattooed into tenement bricks
with the soot of dead industry,
added to the diet
with the excess salt and saturated fat,

Paving the roads
on which all ambition travels south,
And fizzing through the lager
on its way to the head

Now hangs around the kids
like the stink around an ashtray
and stifles any pride
they might invest in themselves.

They will pass it on
with their genes
and their endless disappointments,
despising anyone who rises
above the station
at which they are
eternally delayed.

...someone once said to me ‘my nights are yours’
And for this I will never forgive them.
Naturally...