Time here is treacle -

it's thick and syrupy, a rich golden glow that envelopes the spoon while flowing over the edges inevitably leaving a trail / a thread if you will, that will never be chased down or scooped up without leaving a sticky sweet trace that will last days before it fully fades to a savoured memory.

Time here is golden treacle.

May your bells jingle all the way
May your snow be crisp and even
May you ding **** merrily on high
And may Saint Nick keep you believing

Rudolph The Red stayed in his shed
Unhappy with minimum wage
He refused to get started
Cos he wasn't rewarded
With the promised end of year raise

Rudolph The Red sang with his friends
And staged an all-advent sit-in
But Santa just smiled
Cos his jet had been fuelled
In advance for such an occasion

Rudolph The Red looked overhead
While Santa sped round the world
When Santa got back
With his large empty sack
His workshop was empty of Elves

Rudolph The Red was no longer led
By thoughts of personal gain
He'd formed his first union
With Elves and ten snowmen
And the workers were free once again

I believe in choice.
I believe in the power of choice.
I believe in the God-given right
to freely choose
what we choose to choose.

Freely choosing -
Freely making -
Freely selecting -
our choice.

Freely taking
one of the options
offered to us,
freely declining
to take the others.

Freely deciding what we want,
what we will,
what we'd like
to choose.

I believe in our free will.
I believe in just one-more-
before-I-go
slice of cake.

I sat in front of the mirror and reflected on age and plans and paths and happenstance. And as I reflected, my reflection faded and I looked inward and found a new road, a narrower path and an older way, leading me to my paths-maker rather than to my path-dictator and to my next choice on the adventure that my maker had made free and had made ordained, one and the same.
And as I looked, the dark fell and the light rose and reflected well on our choice. And so I too rose, and we walked on.

Take your own life
violently by the scruff,
and LIFT.
Once you have its undivided,
wholehearted attention,
stare it straight in the eyes,
and say 'Enough!'
'This is a self-interest intervention.
'Get over this,
shake yourself free
of this mid life need
for a preoccupation
by hostile thoughts
and self-absorbtion,
put to one side
self-indulgent fictions
and get real,
get serious
and get a life
that is true to the person
you now are.
And start by ending the comb-over.
It's a non-starter.'

The man stood in his thick red coat and sore shiny feet, square in the threshold, charged with a ready welcome and ruddy face.

He stood with no name but the one assumed for him and, unbeknown to him, inherited from his predecessor who too stood in a similar red coat and sore shiny feet and with his own style of smile.

He stood until he fell one March morning, in his thick red coat and his sore shiny feet and with a heart that failed to live up to the responsibility that came with the threshold and the coat and the shiny feet and instead chose to take its rest.

The man stood in his thick red coat and sore shiny feet square in the threshold, charged with a duty to smile with an open face, with no name but the one assumed for him and, unbeknown to him, inherited from his predecessor.

And he stood.
And he smiled.
As charged.