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saksham parashar Aug 2015
When the day will come,
I promise, I will meet
The statues will feel,
Culprits will kneel
The day may come bringing,
The promise to the being

And then I promise we’ll meet,
The Doomsday I feel,
The Doomsday I feel.

Knowledge of transcendence,
Not the freedom being killed.
The day it will be,
And I promise we’ll meet.

The Doomsday I feel,
The Doomsday I feel

Love will fly off,
The earth to heaven.
The night will feel love,
Back into the affair of ocean.
The pride may cry,
The souls may fly.

And then I promise, we’ll meet
The Doomsday, I feel
The Doomsday, I feel.
Long time
Michael Marchese Sep 2016
Midnight approaches
Tick tick tock
Won't someone stop
The Doomsday Clock
From striking oil
Drilling rock
Thirsting soil
Aftershock
Deserted hourglass of sand
Shifts to resource hungry hand
Tyrants of time assume command
Greed consumes
This wasted land

First come the roaches
Tick tick tock
The bugs can't stop
The Doomsday Clock
With beehive brains
No voice to talk
And droning minds
Comprise the flock
As lone wolves feast
On sheep they stalk

Then fear encroaches
Tick tick tock
Too scared to stop
The Doomsday Clock
As violence claims
Each city block
Blood drawn on streets
Like sidewalk chalk
When Hatred's loaded
Gun is cocked

Beyond reproaches
Tick tick tock
How could they stop
The Doomsday Clock
When despots trade
In human stock
Waging war
Upon this rock
As profits slaughter
More livestock

The end approaches
Tick tick tock
No hope to stop
The Doomsday Clock
As poisoned skies
Corrode this rock
With toxic lies
Controlling hourglass of sand
Clenched by Atlas choking hand
Titans of industry command
Still Chronos rules
This dying land
Lucky Queue Dec 2012
It's a bit funny
But on doomsday I found
No fear or tears shed by me
Somehow on the day of doom
I only found love and happiness
My best friend wasn't a loss
When he lost that title
In fact it was a gain,
And he exchanged for a new one
Fingers intertwining
Sitting close and talking
My incessantly icy fingers
Warmed by your touch
My smiles always flow easier
And more readily around you
I either talk too much or too little
But with you it seems fine
I wouldn't change much about
My doomsday
It was pretty **** near perfect
On my doomsday I found hope
What did you find?
For Gary
Cassis Myrtille Sep 2013
Doomsday is coming soon
(DOOMSDAY IS COMING SOON)
Who am I kidding?
Piles of papers
With the onerous reds
Who am i kidding
Who am i kidding
Ready to fail every single exam
Here i come
Doomsday 2013
Z  Aug 2018
Bipolar and Addicted
Z Aug 2018
Too many thoughts, too many feelings, too many faces

Yea, what’s the feeling of success?
Achieved so many things, but all I feel is regret,
I feel alone inside my head what don’t you get?
Wake up every morning like it’s still my set,
Reminisce on where I come from so I don’t forget,
Been to rehab a dozen times, they called me a vet,
You thought you knew me, I haven’t opened the curtains yet

Alcohol destroyed all my relationships
Forgot most of my life - except for the video clips,
Poisoned my brain to forget the pain, on the daily I feel insane
I’m above the ground though I can’t complain, god relieve this pain
I feel like I drank the blood of Cain,

Every day is a surprise, my brain tells me I’m so wise,
But he’s a master in disguise, while I’m the one who cries,
He’s the one who lies,
To me in my own voice watching my demise,
When he’s in in control anything flies,
It scares me, I built a fortress to disguise,
This out of control mind, I want to cut the ties
A Broad perception, in a beautiful world, through these eyes,

Try to express my feelings, no one can understand
**** it no one can, this experience is mine god had it planned
Just hope I can grow up to be the man,
The one he created to do whatever he can,
Yea, whatever he wants, his drive his will he can make a stand,
A visionary, Socrates his thoughts are grand,

Who do I trust, who I am or who I want to be,
It’s confusing with a devil living inside of me,
Loving spouse, family man what I try to be,
This bipolar got a hold of me,
Blindfolding me I can’t see,
Please doctor doctor set my mind free,
I thought I knew everything with my degree,
The lessons I learned from the things I failed to see,

Mommy and daddy got divorced when I was a kid,
I think I was 8, I can’t remember, who am I to kid,
My first blackout in life, daddy’s about to lose his wife,
So much anger, “he’s” telling me to find the knife,
Take it to the artery just a little slice,
Life’s not as nice, as people make it seem,
No one hears me scream, from the pain,
Inside this brain, some days I feel insane,
110 on the freeway trying to stay in my lane,
Drunk driving no I’m not sane,
Getting high to alleviate the pain

One day I can be the man, goals, driven, and full of will,
The next be full of sadness, regret, life stands still,
I can remember anger that drove me to ****,
You don’t know how I feel,
People probably thought I made a deal,
With the devil to have all this skill,
I write all these thoughts, hoping there’s a heart to fill,

Hope someone can relate,
I hope my pain makes you elate,
My perceptions not up for debate,
Here is my life there’s no room to understate,
The reality of my life and the things on my plate,
Strive to be in a mentally stable state,
Sometimes life’s not so great,
My minds locked in a crate, and he is the key holder of my fate,

My life feels like an afterthought,
Stepdad thought love was something that could be bought,
Used to get in trouble every time I got caught,
Only if they knew the realism of what I did, or maybe they ought
Not to know, but for the sake of the flow, I’m going to let go,
Put on a show so they finally understand what they missed long ago,

Let’s start as a little boy, all the love you showed was a decoy,
For the truth that mommy and daddy were ready to destroy,
Split us up, brown moving boxes was it all momma’s ploy?
I still don’t know the truth, I don’t want to ask or annoy

They say they fell out of love, how can you fall out of love,
Unless you gave up? Don’t you realize who’s above,
Poor American white family, three kids and divorced, man the stereo type fits like a glove,
Never got physically, but always received a verbal shove,
Psychologically I wish I could dispose of,
This garbage that’s left behind, in this mind how am I supposed to give away free love,


One day at a time, one fight, I’m going to give it all my might,
Serenity prayer please give me the light,
To accept my life and guide me right,
Some days things are out of sight,
God comfort me so I feel alright,
I’m shrouded in darkness, call me the dark knight,
Noble I’m my cause, daily life’s a plight,

As a teenager I survived off my drive,
Then there was the day I didn’t want to be alive,
Locked those feelings deep in the archive,
Padlocked in the deep parts of the brain so they don’t thrive,
Questioning the purpose of life when I was five,
Asked about space and God, curiosity already took a dive,
Most people and me don’t really jive,
One instinct on my mind is to survive,
Mania kicking in putting me in overdrive,
Found out when I was twenty-five,
I’m mentally ill, my life took a nose dive,
Time to wake up and revive,
It’s time to deprive,
The addiction and the **** I do to connive,
God im going to work on my life until arrive,
To the kingdom, hopefully I live to see thirty-five,

Todays a new day, no telling what I might do,
Try to hold my family together, backbone and the glue,
Just accept my view, everything’s not about you,
Been self-reflecting, I’m having a break through,
This story is contagious, call it reality flu,
Knocked on deaths door, Alcohol blood volume .492,

What was I thinking? Pores stinking, breath wreaking,
Family and friends shrieking, at all my drinking,
Woke up surrounded by the medical team,
Asked me if I was suicidal, I said what do you mean?
I’m a genius, with a good job, had one since fourteen,
Worked hard my whole life, why am I here confused as hell - creating a scene,
Needle in my arm, threatening to restrain me,
God please set me free, right now you’re the only one that can help me,
Ready to fight the doctors and nurses, now they’re going to petition me,

When I opened up my eyes,
Seen my momma with tears in her eyes,
Most painful look I’ve ever seen on her face,
Now I feel like a huge disgrace, wish she knew gods grace,
My hearts racing at a fast pace, anxiety took over freaking out in this place,
The realest hug ive ever felt was from momma while I was in that room,
Time to clean up my life, time to clear my mind and get out of the back room,
Where my thoughts are locked, time to forgive and bury the in their own tomb,
Most think they know me, and its dangerous to assume,
Most my life you seen me in my costume, hiding behind the monster of doom,
Spent so many hours in my bedroom, drinking so much leaving behind an ethanol fume,
Days later it’s still hanging around, how the poison turns everything into a darkroom.

12 days locked in the psych ward, hopefully I can move my life forward,
Dr. says I had an episode of major depression, I forgot to tell them about my secret obsession,
These words are the closest thing I have to a confession,
When I die take my brain for a case study dissection,
Don’t let my evil said lead you to mis-direction,
When im aware I can make the correction,
What an elusive lie, chasing perfection,
Life is about love and a real connection,
God im tired, give me a symbol give me direction,

Therapy sessions for years, did nothing to help these tears,
Still react with impulsion and anger, watch out for the danger,
the biggest fear ive ever had was the fear of myself,
and the things I was capable of to destroy myself or secure the wealth.
So many secrets it’s a masquerade, im hidden behind my stealth,
The lies created to maintain this alter-ego destroying my mental health,

My biggest pains in life are when I had it all and left it all,
My depression after mania was the biggest fall,
I felt like I was the king of the world, king of the jungle; hear my call,
My ego inflated from my achievements, made me feel tall,
Daddys dream was his oldest boy would play college ball,
Just like the song boys of fall,

Daddys dream wasn’t mine to live,
But that wont stop me from giving all I can give,
Im sorry for the night I was drunk and we got combative,
I shut that night out its not something I want to relive,
Please daddy forgive, now you’re so corroborative.

Now momma I know we do not speak,
The real issue is we don’t want to feel weak,
Why are we so strong, the ones who cant take critique,
Maybe we are so unique, and live life with such technique,
The type of thoughts people think are antique,
Their arguments bleak, our common point is its our mind we speak,

Im ready for the conversation, a common destination,
Where we live in harmony, and actions don’t lead to causation,
I hope my dictation, and the acceptance of your creation,
Allows you to accept me and the ground I call my foundation,
Rebuild our family, together we can create a formation,
Our time and love the only donation, mix em together titration,
It’s a ruination of the family, its everything I wanted it to be,

Ive struggled with every relationship,
With anyone I let close I seem to lose myself and flip the script,
Those evil days I hide in my mind, security equipped and encrypt,
I feel like im writing a manuscript, a story of a man who slipped,
On the struggles of life, and opportunities that have been stripped,

Went to college on a full ride, paid for room and board seen the debt and just about cried,
350 a month to the government talk about a life hurdle that broke my stride,
Since graduation I noticed im the new dr. jekyl and mr hyde,
Success in my life was implied, mental health hit me on my broadside,
Missed my grad school opportunity, I should have applied,
Had love going for me, turned into a landslide,
All I want to do is have a good job and be able to provide,
Im not the only one suffering this epidemic is worldwide,
I just want to sit by the lake side, retire and reside,
Somewhere peaceful where a simple life is implied,
The only downside, is the demon inside me that takes me on the regular for a joyride.

Worked 80 hours a week, drinking a fifth a day,
Most people don’t even know what to say,
To me it was just another day,
Its about to get nasty watch out for the word play,
Life not black and white live in the grey,
Area, mass hysteria, my mind runs astray,
Enough liquor in my blood to make me sway,
One wrong move may be my doomsday,
I write about my life like a final exam essay,
Giving it my all no halfway,
Yea, im making headway, opening the doorway,
For all to enter; serve up my experience like a fine dining entrée,
Living check to check, cant wait for payday,
Maybe someday, ill be on the golden walkway,
To the kingdom of god then ill be okay,
Impulses so strong its hard not to obey,
The other side of me that’s so hard to portray,
When hes manic I get risqué,
Let me paint a picture, get your tickets to the screenplay.

They say its not what you go through, but what you became of it,
My lifes not a stereotype, those stipulations don’t fit,
I seem to get back up after every hit, I couldn’t write this skit,
Im trying to use my ****, my mind feels split, I cant take this ****,
I just want to quit, go to therapy to learn skills and what to omit,
From my life, its hard ill have to admit,
Elementary school I realized I was a misfit,
Dreams in the stars, illuminated and moonlit,
Building a legacy without a permit,
Try to live life so im not a hypocrite.

Shocked by the responses to voice and gods word,
You can say in high school I was a nerd,
Football MVP and valedictorian man that’s absurd,
Wanna know my secret, ask me the password,
Stand on my own, not a part of the heard,
Forgive me for all my problems and troubles that have occurred.

The darkest secret you don’t know,
Is that im not motivated by the dough,
It’s the times where Im feeling high and low,
Sometimes it feels like time is slow,
The biggest crush to my ego,
Was when I had a 20-gauge ready to pull the trigger and blow,
Racking the shells, playing with the ammo,
The rest of my life I was about to forego,
I wanted to let go, because I wanna know
I write to share my story of experience, strength and hope.
In Recovery mentally and Recovering from substance abuse
Morgan Mercury  Jul 2013
Doomsday
Morgan Mercury Jul 2013
With sand sinking quickly,
It’s dragging me down and there’s no way of saving me.
You stand and watch me drown in my own river, for now, I’m just a skeleton in your closet.

Words of regret you feed me,
But I throw them into the stream because the adventure was so much sweeter.
I told you to just leave me in a pit and wait for the earth to cover me up.
If you so greedily wish to see me again just dig me up.
When I ask to throw me into the sea you were scared of the waves I was to create.
I told you not to worry because if you want to see me again just dive down below.

This life is all I want to remember.
I don’t want to live a future.
You told me if I died you’ll never grow me flowers or cry for my pain.
So I stopped and lived another day for you.

And you told me you have been on the run for decades but never knew why.
So since you know you must keep moving you kissed me in every language you knew,
As our hands parted like passing ships.
Doctor Who
Ten/Rose
Countdowns have always seemed bittersweet to me..
The steady ticking away of time
The trickle of sand through the hourglass.
The fading of connections not curated.

I’ve always been morbidly aware of my own doomsday clock,
Slowly beating, decreasing, releasing my
Seconds into the atmosphere around me,
As I wait, sometimes impatiently, for it to hit zero.

Some days, I hope for my hourglass to run dry,
And while I know that that isn’t a healthy mindset,
Some days it is all that I can do to not hurry it along.

Not to take that revolver in my dad’s lockbox,
Not to take those pills in the medicine cabinet,
Not to take that rope and the one wobbly stool
that has sat at our bar for the past five years…

Just beckoning me.
Just wanting me to take that final step
into sweet, sweet oblivion.
But.

If I do take that final step..
Who would be there to pick up the pieces for them?
To clean up the mess that this disgusting body left behind?

Who would be there to finish my paintings,
To sing my unsung list that is ever-expanding,
To write these words that have seemed so forced these past months?

Who would be there for them, when I could not be?
Someone, I am sure, but I have been told that I am irreplaceable,
And while I may not believe that,
I am scared of leaving a mess behind
That my mother cannot bring herself to clean up.

I am scared of leaving behind a mess that would irrevocably break my father,
A mess that would torment my brothers,
A mess that my sisters would never even remember.

And maybe..
Maybe I am scared of the call of oblivion..
Or scared of the unknowingness of it all, rather.

Or perhaps I am tired of thinking
of myself as a mess to be cleaned up,
Nothing more, and nothing less.

And maybe
That is all I need
To survive one more day.
I haven't been as active as I used to be.. Life gets tiring after awhile.
MdAsadullah Dec 2014
Evening! fearful face turns red,
you set in the west, awed!
With reverence and respect
you prostrate before Almighty God.
Whole night you travel
a fixed course beyond my ken
so that with God's permission
from east you can rise again.
This has been going on
and go on till the time ordained
then your route will be changed,
from prostration you'll be refrained.
People will be surprised
to see you rising from west that day.
Door of repentance will be closed,
very very near will be Doomsday.
One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound
except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember
whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve
nights when I was six.

All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky
that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in
the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays
resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.

It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her
son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland,
though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we
waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they
would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and
moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their
eyes. The wise cats never appeared.

We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows - eternal, ever
since Wednesday - that we never heard Mrs. Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or,
if we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar
cat. But soon the voice grew louder.
"Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.

And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring
out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town crier
in Pompeii. This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the
house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room.

Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a
newspaper over his face. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and
smacking at the smoke with a slipper.

"Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong.
"There won't be there," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas."
There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in the middle of them, waving his
slipper as though he were conducting.
"Do something," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I think we missed Mr. Prothero - and
ran out of the house to the telephone box.
"Let's call the police as well," Jim said. "And the ambulance." "And Ernie Jenkins, he likes fires."

But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall men in helmets brought a hose
into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier
Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt,
Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would
say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets,
standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Would you like anything to read?"

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel
petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt
like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the
English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the
daft and happy hills *******, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I
made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."

"But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it
came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow
grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and
settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."

"Were there postmen then, too?"
"With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and
mittened on them manfully. But all that the children could hear was a ringing of bells."
"You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?"
"I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them."
"I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells."
"There were church bells, too."
"Inside them?"
"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks. And they rang their tidings
over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea. It
seemed that all the churches boomed for joy under my window; and the weathercocks crew for Christmas, on our
fence."

"Get back to the postmen"
"They were just ordinary postmen, found of walking and dogs and Christmas and the snow. They knocked on the
doors with blue knuckles ...."
"Ours has got a black knocker...."
"And then they stood on the white Welcome mat in the little, drifted porches and huffed and puffed, making
ghosts with their breath, and jogged from foot to foot like small boys wanting to go out."
"And then the presents?"
"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a rose on his button-nose, tingled
down the tea-tray-slithered run of the chilly glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on
fishmonger's slabs.
"He wagged his bag like a frozen camel's ****, dizzily turned the corner on one foot, and, by God, he was
gone."

"Get back to the Presents."
"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths;
zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-
shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking
tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you
wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now,
alas, no longer whinnying with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not
to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp,
except why."

"Go on the Useless Presents."
"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and
a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a
little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that
an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the
trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the
red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge and allsorts, crunches,
cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who,
if they could not fight, could always run. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for
Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle to make the dogs bark to
wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall.
And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited
for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And
then it was breakfast under the balloons."

"Were there Uncles like in our house?"
"There are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles. And on Christmas morning, with dog-disturbing whistle
and sugar ****, I would scour the swatched town for the news of the little world, and find always a dead bird
by the Post Office or by the white deserted swings; perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires out. Men and
women wading or scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses and wind-bussed cheeks, all albinos, huddles
their stiff black jarring feathers against the irreligious snow. Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all
the front parlors; there was sherry and walnuts and bottled beer and crackers by the dessertspoons; and cats in
their fur-abouts watched the fires; and the high-heaped fire spat, all ready for the chestnuts and the mulling
pokers. Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying
their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms' length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then
holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the
kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to
break, like faded cups and saucers."

Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this
time of year, with spats of snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he
would take it wet or fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale young men, with big pipes blazing,
no overcoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking, down to the forlorn sea, to work up an appetite,
to blow away the fumes, who knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was left but the two furling
smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars. Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy smell of the
dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils, when out of a
snow-clogged side lane would come a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the violet past of
a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself.

I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my lips and blow him off the face
of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his lips and blew so stridently, so high,
so exquisitely loud, that gobbling faces, their cheeks bulged with goose, would press against their tinsled
windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after
dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch
chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie
Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some
elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port,
stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to
see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In
the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among
festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions
for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.

Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim
and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge footprints on the hidden pavements.
"I bet people will think there's been hippos."
"What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?"
"I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill and then I'd tickle him
under the ear and he'd wag his tail."
"What would you do if you saw two hippos?"

Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr.
Daniel's house.
"Let's post Mr. Daniel a snow-ball through his letter box."
"Let's write things in the snow."
"Let's write, 'Mr. Daniel looks like a spaniel' all over his lawn."
Or we walked on the white shore. "Can the fishes see it's snowing?"

The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills,
and vast dewlapped dogs, with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying "Excelsior." We
returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-
rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock
birds and the hooting of ships out in the whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly;
and the ice cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced her tea with ***,
because it was only once a year.

Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like
owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the
stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving
of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we
stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand
in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant
and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them?
Hark the Herald?"
"No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, two three, and we began to sing, our voices high
and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood
close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ... And then a small,
dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry,
eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped
running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-
gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town.
"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said.
"Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading.
"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that.

Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another
uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip
wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a
Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out
into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other
houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas
down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.
Robyn Dec 2012
You're welcome, Earth.
PS  Feb 2017
Doomsday Clock
PS Feb 2017
You know how there's a Doomsday clock that measures how close we are from a global catastrophe?
That's about as close as I am to messaging you on any given day.
very very close now

— The End —