Across from me at the bar table,
the bartender smiles and asks for my order
I tell him, "anything strong," and hand him ten dollars
I drink it up, feel its strength running down my throat
into my ever-growing stomach
I look up and remember what I've left at home
My wife sat in the bedroom alone,
My children pacing around and adapting the way women and men are supposed to be

I have taught my son power, strength, and dominance
While I have taught my daughter weakness and submission
Maybe that's where I went wrong as a father
Where all previous generations of my family have gone wrong
Raising me as a man seeing women as objects,
And I raising my son in the same manner
I take one last sip from my ten dollar drink
Taking it in along with my realizations

In front of me is the door of my home
where I have left women to shrink
in order to enlarge myself to the point of overfeeding my ego
And then I decided to shrink myself into the size
of the women I've shrunk

The size of my home has grown larger
Its proportions have expanded
Allowing each of us to occupy the same amount of space
And so I sat across my wife at the kitchen table
Looking at her at eye level
She smiles and I smile back

To winter from autumn seems gradual
the colder days seem never to come
then suddenly
Evenings dark and misty, mornings grey
Daytime unpredictable as moods
Changing the way I feel about the season
Can be down to the moment
As the weather is pocketed in sealed containers
waiting for nature to unwrap
Crisp leaves that grow slippery and brown
as they become a slight carpeting on the dampness
Stones of summer now covered in brown rain
their reflective paths a dismal slide, waiting
for your forceful heel to push against the tide
Steaming car exhausts hang in the air
The drivers clothed in coloured warmth
avoiding the stupid local cold
Inside the cabins the impossible air grates
through the vents and produces unnatural
heat as respectful workers chug their way onward
The uncertain and limbo times of autumn's life
is it just a precurser to the false star of Christmas
A painful unnecessary period of man's making
For what? A need to have time feeling justified
Of wasted resource and overfeeding.
How desperate this must sound to our ancestors
The souls that made us what we are.
Who had precious few pleasures. How much
would they appreciate our behaviour
At this time of fallow and rest. Conserving,
containing, consolidating our harvest
Saving our gain from mother earth
To keep our winter wholesome and honest.
No need to look far for goodness, the days
are all exquisite, the elements bring us
back to our roots and encourage our piety, for
each and everyone I ask for moderation,
careful spending and realisation that the
moving of warm, to cool, to cold is a message of love
from our earth. Not a reason to spend
A reason to exploit or ignore the wonderful gift
we are sent at Yule, the chance to dwell
and to mull over the year and be thankful
For we are the keepers of the earth
an endowment of faith and love for all
Be still and feel the chill air as it encompasses
our body but most of all enjoy the peace
As earth sleeps

Does this mean much to you,
Force fed at Yuletide too?
Unsure if Jesus meant all this,
Tinsel town of retail bliss,
Beginning to feel like Yuletide,
Snow in Aussie ocean tide,
Swimming and drinking,
What is Santa thinking?
Overfeeding everyone,
Overstuffed games in the sun,
Does Jesus think we're crude?
Groaning, here's more food,
Gimme more gifts and a card,
Graft at Christmas, that's so hard,
No matter who's to blame,
Megastores feel  no shame,
Buy, buy, buy, right away,
Rather ceasefires this festive day,
Despite Bing Crosby, okay,
That's what Jesus would really say!

Man and his dog

He awoke under the bed, and it had been his birthday
drinking champagne, eating Danish pastry, and smoking Havana cigars
He walked into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and took out
a beer, which he thirstily drank while wondering why
Everything was so quiet
The maid had been in when he slept, and everything was in order
When did the guests leave, or had he partied with his teddy bear
Being lonely since his dog died
Looking out of the window, he saw many cars, and they had
No drivers and some had open doors as if abandoned in haste,
But what had happened?
In a bakery/café, he had a sandwich of cheese and tomatoes,
He made it himself since the lady who owned it
The café was not there.
It dawned on him that he was alone in the world, everything
He didn't need to share his good fortune with anyone,
Except for the cur outside that ran away and barked when seeing him
He tried the Rolls-Royce that belonged to the mayor
Yes, the ride was smooth, distracted by thoughts, he hit a lamp-post,
But never mind, there were other cars around
At an expensive restaurant where he once had dined,
He made and made himself a hamburger with hot fries
drunk on the most expensive red wine possible.
The dog that had growled at him looked at him through the window,
wagging tail, it knew he was the only one left to feed it
Months went by, and the window, his life, was getting a bit onerous,
just him and the dog following him around, getting fat from his overfeeding.
He stopped shaving, showering, and wearing the same pants
Since the day was endless anyway, why bother with personal hygiene
When there was no pressure to conform
Deeply depressed, he jumped from the top floor of
a tall building to end it all.
No such luck! He descended, slowly broke down, and cried freely
as the dog was the only witness to his sadness
Doomed to live forever, he lay down under the bed
But before falling into Nirvana's arms, he got up again
Someone had to feed the dog.