Wait a minute, is it already Christmas again
Seems I just took down the lights and the tree
Is there no rest for the downtrodden and weary
This season sometimes takes the Merry Gentleman out of me

So I load up the sleigh with the dog and the kids
The old beat up station wagon I drive
On the hunt for this years perfect tree
We'll be lucky if we make it back home alive

As we jingle all the way to the local tree farm
Six kids and a dog singing at the top of their lungs
With only twelve days left before Christmas
My **, **, **, is already long gone

Picking the best tree out within our budget
My wife says Charlie Brown would be proud
I ask smarty pants Mrs. Santa what she meant by that
She'd rather not say with the little elves around

Before an argument even ensues
I've lost the battle before I hit the front line
You wonder how I'm so confident of that
The same thing happened last year at this time

As I struggle to get the tree off the roof of my jalopy
While Jack the dog in the frost is nipping at my toes
I fall to the ground with visions of sugar plums dancing in my head
Waking up to the dogs frozen tongue stuck up my nose

Finally with the tree set up in the front parlor
I notice it leans bad to one side
Taking my chainsaw to alleviate the problem
The gas fumes **** my kids parakeet out right

With Hobby Lobby open late for the holidays
I was able to purchase the product I need
Working late into the wee morning hours
I did a good job shellacking the parakeet

I'm not sure that my kids even noticed
Or brought up the question what for
But they sure like the shinny new ornament
Hanging next to the hamster that disappeared the year before

Well, I survived another preparing for Christmas
As subconsciously I'm being led
To wrap myself in last years present "The Snuggie"
And dream of those sugar plums dancing in my head

Where I belong, or destined to be
Is not exactly clear like
Crystalline doubt with fear in tow.
No,
Not on the ridge where I stand partly
In sky atop a roof not there
In its geometrical theory.
With the straight line
Like hammer to wood
Curved yet target laid,
Walking sticks on top of sticks
I nail my presence to homes
Yet homely to be made.
Not on the porch where lemonaid
Will be poured and yet to be's
Will extend on in time as an
Echo lingers of what no one sees.

I build a home
And leave a peice of me unknown.

As I stand firmly on the edge of the abyss
Knowing full well it has come down to this
Take a step forward, over the line
Falling forever into the recesses of time

And yet as I fall, hurtling through space,
I see threads past and present fall into place.
Wings slowly emerge as I shift focus again
And follow the threads through worlds unending

Passing by stars like a bird in mid flight
As imagination and I with strange worlds collide
Bringing to tip the entire galaxies scale
Stripping all of it bare as I pull back the veil

And yet further it expands, limitless, unbound.
Edging just from my grasp and falling around
My body, just a slip of flesh
Curled in ephemeral folds of a space time mesh

Just as quickly as it started I am back in a flash
Standing where I once stood on the abyss's edge
With the flexing of muscle and the spreading of wings
I fall into face forward to do it all over again

i want you to know, the poem you wrote
it really touched my heart
did you have an idea when you wrote it
that it would be the spark
to lighten up the inner flame
that would brighten up my dark
a poem that touched my very soul
and left on it, it's mark

did you know the words you chose
brought me to my knees
and that those very words you chose
were at that moment what i needed
they caused the clouds to separate
and the sun to shine on me
the words you chose
swung wide open the closed
door in front of me

i just wanted you to know
about the poem you wrote

A theorem:

any map of the world
contained on a plane
of contiguous regions

needs only four colors
to prevent the bleeding
of borders.

No matter the shape,
nor how many times
a nation state

splits itself up
with all the fight
of man splitting the atom,

nor how many splinter
groups stick themselves
into the skin

of the innocent. Any four
colors, take blue for the oceans
or black for the bruise,

it’s not the borders bleeding
but the insides,
you seeking refuge

in worlds that blame you
for the men that hold the atoms
that split you.

Odds are you’ve never
seen an atlas of only four colors
because Atlas picks more,

how else to contain it all,
to keep from shouting fine
and letting the whole globe

fall.

Oh, poor atlas.

Salaam, shalom,
what we want
is all the same,
but paix,
it sounds so different.