it's the twenty-fourth and every one's out the streets are dead like the laughter that died out lampposts light blotches of the road and Christmas this year feels like a fraud we hung out at the old bar on the curb and we drank til the night was nothing but a blur cruelly reminisced the days with bittersweet smiles can you be jealous of your own past, you the child? cheating husbands and bachelor loons they're all wasted and it's all too soon for a family to split and spend Christmas eve with a friend for a while before they get up and leave and it's such a shame that a time has come when you can only hear the roars of a gun hell, do you want to hear what's worse? tonight a couple million drunks will break down and curse when their hangover sets before the northern star and the ***** of words that follow isn't that far for all we know we are slaves of a tradition that seems so far from its own meaning in religion but can you do anything, and hear over the masses chanting rebellion against every traitor that passes? can you really hear the chiming of church bells when the world of humans is nothing but a living hell? it's the twenty-fourth and everyone's out to feast on a Christmas of pain and doubt *p.t.