"thereon" poems
BLESSED be this place,
More blessed still this tower;
A ****** arrogant power
Rose out of the race
Uttering, mastering it,
Rose like these walls from these
Storm-beaten cottages --
In mockery I have set
A powerful emblem up,
And sing it rhyme upon rhyme
In mockery of a time
HaIf dead at the top.
Alexandria's was a beacon tower, and Babylon's
An image of the moving heavens, a log-book of the
sun's journey and the moon's;
And Shelley had his towers, thought's crowned powers
he called them once.
I declare this tower is my symbol; I declare
This winding, gyring, spiring treadmill of a stair is my
ancestral stair;
That Goldsmith and the Dean, Berkeley and Burke
have travelled there.
Swift beating on his breast in sibylline frenzy blind
Because the heart in his blood-sodden breast had
dragged him down into mankind,
Goldsmith deliberately sipping at the honey-pot of his
mind,
And haughtier-headed Burke that proved the State a
tree,
That this unconquerable labyrinth of the birds, cen-
tury after century,
Cast but dead leaves to mathematical equality;
And God-appointed Berkeley that proved all things a
dream,
That this pragmatical, preposterous pig of a world, its
farrow that so solid seem,
Must vanish on the instant if the mind but change its
theme;
Saeva Indignatio and the labourer's hire,
The strength that gives our blood and state magnani-
mity of its own desire;
Everything that is not God consumed with intellectual
fire.
III
The purity of the unclouded moon
Has flung its atrowy shaft upon the floor.
Seven centuries have passed and it is pure,
The blood of innocence has left no stain.
There, on blood-saturated ground, have stood
Soldier, assassin, executioner.
Whether for daily pittance or in blind fear
Or out of abstract hatred, and shed blood,
But could not cast a single jet thereon.
Odour of blood on the ancestral stair!
And we that have shed none must gather there
And clamour in drunken frenzy for the moon.
IV
Upon the dusty, glittering windows cling,
And seem to cling upon the moonlit skies,
Tortoiseshell butterflies, peacock butterflies,
A couple of night-moths are on the wing.
Is every modern nation like the tower,
Half dead at the top? No matter what I said,
For wisdom is the property of the dead,
A something incompatible with life; and power,
Like everything that has the stain of blood,
A property of the living; but no stain
Can come upon the visage of the moon
When it has looked in glory from a cloud.
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Though nurtured like the sailing moon
In beauty's murderous brood,
She walked awhile and blushed awhile
And on my pathway stood
Until I thought her body bore
A heart of flesh and blood.
But since I laid a hand thereon
And found a heart of stone
I have attempted many things
And not a thing is done,
For every hand is lunatic
That travels on the moon.
She smiled and that transfigured me
And left me but a lout,
Maundering here, and maundering there,
Emptier of thought
Than the heavenly circuit of its stars
When the moon sails out.
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A shooting star is rare to see
a wish thereon will come true
i can see that star its near not far
that shooting staris you
Sep 30, 2014
Sep 30, 2014 at 11:54 PM UTC
A SOCIETY WRITTEN IN FLAMES; SHROUDED IN DARKNESS
*The tears flows in an endless way
Bemoaning the days of yore
Watching with eyes that sparks red,
Sunken and beaten from the tragedies of yore
Helpless and wishing for a relentless call
As tragedy hits her most sensitive part,
Bemoaning the tides,
All her days of glory,
Now a shadowy story*
*She had been ***** by her very own,
The children she yearned and bled for,
The men she fed and trained,
Where her rain fell full and vast, to soothe their hearts
Where she gave it all, and smiled, hoping that someday, they will realize her sacrifices and sleepless nights,
Her nights of terror and horrors
Where she stood in the midst of the stormy eerie night, shrouded in darkness*
*It was her ******* they ****** and clunged to,
It was her arms that shielded them from the shadows of the dark,
But when they grew and flew,
She waited still
Praying and wishing they would remember the days of yore*
*Then the dark hour rolled away,
And when morning came, it was harrowing.
It was harrowing how she waited abandoned and dejected,
As her sons and daughters peaked at the sky,
Trampling her down,
Relegating and belittling her
Painful it were, as she cried from the agonies of the days of yore,
Where she laid all her virtues down,
Giving it all to see her children smile,*
*It is this dejection that has brought her to tears,
It is this wickedness of a child to a mother, that has made her weep endlessly
It is this tragedy that have swallowed her glory,
As her children keeps flying above huddles, in peace and harmony,
Forgetting her,
It is this callousness, that pushed them to sapping her virtues and enriching themselves with it thereon*
*What is worse than a child abandoning his mother?
It is this penchant, that drives them
It is the love of greed,
It is the seed of corruption,
It is not an inherited trait,
It is a despicable decision
Like a monstrous shadow,
Twirling the back of the night.
It is the fire that burns within their heart,
The fire to **** steal and destroy
To take what she can never give again
To live,
To live big at the expenses of others sorrow and agony
It is this evil that has perused Nigeria and has rendered her a roaming wretch
And now tragedy looms,
It booms and blooms,*
A society written in flames
Who will save MOTHER NIGERIA?
Ovi Odiete© 2016, Oct. 31
All rights reserved
Note
Children here signifies the evil politicians and men that has sapped our country dry with their evil penchant
Oct 31, 2016
Oct 31, 2016 at 7:03 AM UTC
There came an image in Life’s retinue
That had Love’s wings and bore his gonfalon:
Fair was the web, and nobly wrought thereon,
O soul-sequestered face, thy form and hue!
Bewildering sounds, such as Spring wakens to,
Shook in its folds; and through my heart its power
Sped trackless as the immemorable hour
When birth’s dark portal groaned and all was new.
But a veiled woman followed, and she caught
The banner round its staff, to furl and cling,—
Then plucked a feather from the bearer’s wing,
And held it to his lips that stirred it not,
And said to me, ‘Behold, there is no breath:
I and this Love are one, and I am Death.’
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MESSENGER
Now at the Seventh Gate the seventh chief,
Thy proper mother's son, I will announce,
What fortune for this city, for himself,
With curses he invoketh:--on the walls
Ascending, heralded as king, to stand,
With paeans for their capture; then with thee
To fight, and either slaying near thee die,
Or thee, who wronged him, chasing forth alive,
Requite in kind his proper banishment.
Such words he shouts, and calls upon the gods
Who o'er his race preside and Fatherland,
With gracious eye to look upon his prayers.
A well-wrought buckler, newly forged, he bears,
With twofold blazon riveted thereon,
For there a woman leads, with sober mien,
A mailed warrior, enchased in gold;
Justice her style, and thus the legend speaks:--
'This man I will restore, and he shall hold
The city and his father's palace homes.'
Such the devices of the hostile chiefs.
'Tis for thyself to choose whom thou wilt send;
But never shalt thou blame my herald-words.
To guide the rudder of the State be thine!
ETEOCLES
O heaven-demented race of Oedipus,
My race, tear-fraught, detested of the gods!
Alas, our father's curses now bear fruit.
But it beseems not to lament or weep,
Lest lamentations sadder still be born.
For him, too truly Polyneikes named,--
What his device will work we soon shall know;
Whether his braggart words, with madness fraught,
Gold-blazoned on his shield, shall lead him back.
Hath Justice communed with, or claimed him hers,
Guided his deeds and thoughts, this might have been;
But neither when he fled the darksome womb,
Or in his childhood, or in youth's fair prime,
Or when the hair thick gathered on his chin,
Hath Justice communed with, or claimed him hers,
Nor in this outrage on his Fatherland
Deem I she now beside him deigns to stand.
For Justice would in sooth belie her name,
Did she with this all-daring man consort.
In these regards confiding will I go,
Myself will meet him. Who with better right?
Brother to brother, chieftain against chief,
Foeman to foe, I'll stand. Quick, bring my spear,
My greaves, and armor, bulwark against stones.
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1576
The Spirit lasts—but in what mode—
Below, the Body speaks,
But as the Spirit furnishes—
Apart, it never talks—
The Music in the Violin
Does not emerge alone
But Arm in Arm with Touch, yet Touch
Alone—is not a Tune—
The Spirit lurks within the Flesh
Like Tides within the Sea
That make the Water live, estranged
What would the Either be?
Does that know—now—or does it cease—
That which to this is done,
Resuming at a mutual date
With every future one?
Instinct pursues the Adamant,
Exacting this Reply—
Adversity if it may be, or
Wild Prosperity,
The Rumor’s Gate was shut so tight
Before my Mind was sown,
Not even a Prognostic’s Push
Could make a Dent thereon—
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I stood where Love in brimming armfuls bore
Slight wanton flowers and foolish toys of fruit:
And round him ladies thronged in warm pursuit,
Fingered and lipped and proffered the strange store:
And from one hand the petal and the core
Savoured of sleep; and cluster and curled shoot
Seemed from another hand like shame’s salute,—
Gifts that I felt my cheek was blushing for.
At last Love bade my Lady give the same:
And as I looked, the dew was light thereon;
And as I took them, at her touch they shone
With inmost heaven-hue of the heart of flame.
And then Love said: ‘Lo! when the hand is hers,
Follies of love are love’s true ministers.’
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She's a clumsy little human.
Broken beakers, test tubes,
Plates, glassware, door handles,
The antlers of that showpiece deer,
Her bed, her favourite pencil.
Through seventeen (and a half) years of clumsiness
The universe, it's always whispered to her
"However careful you might try to be
Sometimes things, they'll fall out of your clumsy hands
Never on purpose, no satisfactory reason
Leaving you with melancholy ruins.
Sometimes things, they can be fixed
With a little glue and a lot of patience
So fix them before they're lost and
Be ever more careful thereon.
But sometimes things, they can't be fixed
Not with glue nor with patience
And broken they will forever be
So sweep up the pieces gently and
Cast them away sans regret."
She's a clumsy little human.
Broken beakers, test tubes,
Plates, glassware, door handles,
The antlers of that showpiece deer,
Her bed, her favourite pencil,
Trust, hearts and friendships.
Feb 7, 2015
Feb 7, 2015 at 6:35 AM UTC
For every aging boomer
there are one or two they've known:
Heroes of the battlefield
Who never made it home.
Some classmate who was butchered
in a fire fight in “Nam.
A sibling who had perished
in the standoff at Khe Sanh.
Perhaps the Tet offensive
left some friend's blood spilled and spent.
Politicians speak of glory-
It’s the grunts who pay the rent
From the walls of Hue to Can Ranh Bay
from Tonkin to Saigon.
there is a wall in Washington
with their names inscribed thereon.
The lucky ones who did come home
recall the name and face
of some heroic eighteen year old
who perished in their place.
Nov 22, 2011
Nov 22, 2011 at 4:51 PM UTC
{Chorus.} Come praise Colonus' horses, and come praise
The wine-dark of the wood's intricacies,
The nightingale that deafens daylight there,
If daylight ever visit where,
Unvisited by tempest or by sun,
Immortal ladies tread the ground
Dizzy with harmonious sound,
Semele's lad a gay companion.
And yonder in the gymnasts' garden thrives
The self-sown, self-begotten shape that gives
Athenian intellect its mastery,
Even the grey-leaved olive-tree
Miracle-bred out of the living stone;
Nor accident of peace nor war
Shall wither that old marvel, for
The great grey-eyed Athene stareS thereon.
Who comes into this countty, and has come
Where golden crocus and narcissus bloom,
Where the Great Mother, mourning for her daughter
And beauty-drunken by the water
Glittering among grey-leaved olive-trees,
Has plucked a flower and sung her loss;
Who finds abounding Cephisus
Has found the loveliest spectacle there is.
because this country has a pious mind
And so remembers that when all mankind
But trod the road, or splashed about the shore,
Poseidon gave it bit and oar,
Every Colonus lad or lass discourses
Of that oar and of that bit;
Summer and winter, day and night,
Of horses and horses of the sea, white horses.
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The nightfall smears a biding shade and plume
as Nyx complexed the clear diurnal day
and skews the stoic lensing out of gloom
alike the hearted Eros, wrought his sway.
How still the specks of frost on balm and reed
like stars arranged in view for crystal eyes,
and glazed upon the tips; a sweetened mead
which lovers strive in truthful, purple prize.
A sullen stratus coats the idle orb
succumbs the amber beams to patchy lure,
and from within uncertain skies absorb
a kindred duel; dreamers must endure.
Tonight, the morrow, all thereon to be
to ardors flux; at night is when to see.
Jul 29, 2018
Jul 29, 2018 at 2:57 PM UTC
Like an arrow from Cupid
making some people stupid,
Age comes a calling
but no one is falling in
love.
Though age be a temptress,
relentless,
it creaks up on me
to sneak up on me,
always cruising for a bruising
it uses up time.
Never get old I was told,
useless advice,
when our days
are as written, on
one grain of rice.
It holds me spellbound in
its withering looks
creeps into my skin and
paints wrinkles therein and
therein or thereon
lies the tale.
Mar 25, 2015
Mar 25, 2015 at 8:17 AM UTC
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This Me—that walks and works—must die,
Some fair or stormy Day,
Adversity if it may be
Or wild prosperity
The Rumor’s Gate was shut so tight
Before my mind was born
Not even a Prognostic’s push
Can make a Dent thereon—
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"Though to my feathers in the wet,
I have stood here from break of day.
I have not found a thing to eat,
For only ******* comes my way.
Am I to live on lebeen-lone?'
Muttered the old crane of Gort.
"For all my pains on lebeen-lone?'
King Guaire walked amid his court
The palace-yard and river-side
And there to three old beggars said,
"You that have wandered far and wide
Can ravel out what's in my head.
Do men who least desire get most,
Or get the most who most desire?'
A beggar said, "They get the most
Whom man or devil cannot tire,
And what could make their muscles taut
Unless desire had made them so?'
But Guaire laughed with secret thought,
"If that be true as it seems true,
One of you three is a rich man,
For he shall have a thousand pounds
Who is first asleep, if but he can
Sleep before the third noon sounds."
And thereon, merry as a bird
With his old thoughts, King Guaire went
From river-side and palace-yard
And left them to their argument.
"And if I win,' one beggar said,
'Though I am old I shall persuade
A pretty girl to share my bed';
The second: "I shall learn a trade';
The third: "I'll hurry' to the course
Among the other gentlemen,
And lay it all upon a horse';
The second: "I have thought again:
A farmer has more dignity.'
One to another sighed and cried:
The exorbitant dreams of beggary.
That idleness had borne to pride,
Sang through their teeth from noon to noon;
And when the sccond twilight brought
The frenzy of the beggars' moon
None closed his blood-shot eyes but sought
To keep his fellows from their sleep;
All shouted till their anger grew
And they were whirling in a heap.
They mauled and bit the whole night through;
They mauled and bit till the day shone;
They mauled and bit through all that day
And till another night had gone,
Or if they made a moment's stay
They sat upon their heels to rail,,
And when old Guaire came and stood
Before the three to end this tale,
They were commingling lice and blood
"Time's up,' he cried, and all the three
With blood-shot eyes upon him stared.
"Time's up,' he eried, and all the three
Fell down upon the dust and snored.
1
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Milestones Toward Oblivion
by Michael R. Burch
A milestone here leans heavily
against a gaunt, golemic tree.
These words are chiseled thereupon:
"One mile and then Oblivion."
Swift larks that once swooped down to feed
on groping slugs, such insects breed
within their radiant flesh and bones ...
they did not heed the milestones.
Another marker lies ahead,
the only tombstone to the dead
whose eyeless sockets read thereon:
"Alas, behold Oblivion."
Once here the sun shone fierce and fair;
now night eternal shrouds the air
while winter, never-ending, moans
and drifts among the milestones.
This road is neither long nor wide . . .
men gleam in death on either side.
Not long ago, they pondered on
milestones toward Oblivion.
Keywords/Tags: oblivion, milestones, markers, tombstones, radiation, fallout, nukes, winter, path, destruction, Armageddon, Apocalypse, nuclear, a-bomb, atomic bomb, hydrogen bomb, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Bikini Atoll, Manhattan Project, Trump, planet, earth, war, violence, America, environment, holocaust
Apr 8, 2020
Apr 8, 2020 at 2:40 AM UTC
For every aging boomer
There are one or two they've known:
Heroes of the battlefield
Who never made it home.
Some classmate who was butchered
in a fire fight in “Nam.
A sibling who had perished
in the standoff at Khe Sanh.
Perhaps the Tet offensive
left some friend's blood spilled and spent.
Politicians speak of glory-
It’s the grunts who pay the rent
From the walls of Hue to Cam ranh Bay
from Tonkin to Saigon.
there is a wall in Washington
with their names inscribed thereon.
The lucky ones who did come home
Recall the name and face
of some heroic eighteen year old
who perished in their place.
May 23, 2013
May 23, 2013 at 9:52 PM UTC
No man hath dared to write this thing as yet,
And yet I know, how that the souls of all men great
At times pass athrough us,
And we are melted into them, and are not
Save reflexions of their souls.
Thus am I Dante for a space and am
One Francois Villon, ballad-lord and thief,
Or am such holy ones I may not write
Lest blasphemy be writ against my name;
This for an instant and the flame is gone.
’Tis as in midmost us there glows a sphere
Translucent, molten gold, that is the “I”
And into this some form projects itself:
Christus, or John, or eke the Florentine;
And as the clear space is not if a form’s
Imposed thereon,
So cease we from all being for the time,
And these, the Masters of the Soul, live on.
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Now I have tempered haste,
The joyous traveller said,
The steed has passed me now
Whose hurrying hooves I fled.
My spectre rides thereon,
I learned what mount he has,
Upon what summers fed;
And wept to know again,
Beneath the saddle swung,
Treasure for whose great theft
This breast was wrung.
His bridle bells sang out,
I could not tell their chime,
So brilliantly he rings,
But called his name as Time.
His bin was morning light,
Those straws which gild his bed
Are of the fallen West.
Although green lands consume
Beneath their burning tread,
In everlasting bright
His hooves have rest.
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Or is it?
(sonnet #MMMMMMCCXXXIX)
Yes, anime as from a distance' frail
Note comes to hail me on my own phone hence--
Which brother's taste cavorting gaily thence
Like to a happy air I cherish? pale
As liking by mere halves what plays for bail
Now in the background. Lo, and for intents
Sis can make calls, whilst oh! don't ask me whence,
But add the p'lice erm, scanner too, to scale.
If only oh, the LORD would e'er and fer
All time take care of little me. I do
Not know how to whatever, though tis poor,
Ye say, to fess't? My brother's old phone too,
They set it up for me, and how we tour
Their favrite stuff thereon. Fun like few knew.
02Apr17b
Apr 15, 2017
Apr 15, 2017 at 12:49 AM UTC
SAID lady once to lover,
"None can rely upon
A love that lacks its proper food;
And if your love were gone
How could you sing those songs of love?
I should be blamed, young man.
O my dear, O my dear.
Have no lit candles in your room,'
That lovely lady said,
"That I at midnight by the clock
May creep into your bed,
For if I saw myself creep in
I think I should drop dead.'
O my dear, O my dear.
"I love a man in secret,
Dear chambermaid,' said she.
"I know that I must drop down dead
If he stop loving me,
Yet what could I but drop down dead
If I lost my chastity?
O my dear, O my dear.
"So you must lie beside him
And let him think me there.
And maybe we are all the same
Where no candles are,
And maybe we are all the same
That stip the body bare.'
O my dear, O my dear.
But no dogs barked, and midnights chimed,
And through the chime she'd say,
"That was a lucky thought of mine,
My lover. looked so gay';
But heaved a sigh if the chambermaid
Looked half asleep all day.
O my dear, O my dear.
"No, not another song,' siid he,
"Because my lady came
A year ago for the first time
At midnight to my room,
And I must lie between the sheets
When the clock begins to chime.'
O my dear, O my d-ear.
"A laughing, crying, sacred song,
A leching song,' they said.
Did ever men hear such a song?
No, but that day they did.
Did ever man ride such a race?
No, not until he rode.
O my dear, O my dear.
But when his horse had put its hoof
Into a rabbit-hole
He dropped upon his head and died.
His lady saw it all
And dropped and died thereon, for she
Loved him with her soul.
O my dear, O my dear.
The chambermaid lived long, and took
Their graves into her charge,
And there two bushes planted
That when they had grown large
Seemed sprung from but a single root
So did their roses merge.
O my dear, O my dear.
When she was old and dying,
The priest came where she was;
She made a full confession.
Long looked he in her face,
And O he was a good man
And understood her case.
O my dear, O my dear.
He bade them take and bury her
Beside her lady's man,
And set a rose-tree on her grave,
And now none living can,
When they have plucked a rose there,
Know where its roots began.
O my dear, O my dear.
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Right now, plunder he repayeth,
in the eve of the ground corn thereon;
from his nature, He found out about
the city by hand region of the world
It is stupid; contemplating the move
ax; He felt the dishonor, & by the
smoke, & the madness of the conversion
of the hides & cost teenage glory
stockings & abstract winds; You
bring the mysteries of doctrine; Thick
meeting Mark dark for men; Cut thin,
& the heat in the morning; St. by
a goddess; companion; enough by
sweating; it passionate unseen sixth
light rain? Sometimes it happens
successfully ruses state law the first
hot days of the Jew Street; Stand fast
in your labor, & by Before the start
of elders; The other half of the motion
picture; Especially for the part of the
Gauls, sheath & master of propaganda;
Outside is very bright torches beach
mountain; Please exposed to fortune-telling
After spending the stomach girdle
read the book in the wear on the skin,
Certainly fated half of Asia mountains
and at Queen's Medical point; The voice
of the woman stayed eve bruised grain
& robbery the city and nature
found to be made a dunghill from
the side of the sphere of the countries
from the region It is stupid; Moves
contemplated Muses; She sensed
the smoke of a fire, an injury to one's
country, and the madness of the conversion
of the glory; The cost teenage covert side;
The socks are the winds Secret
doctrine; Mark thick dark to meet men;
Cut thin, & the heat in the morning;
St. by a goddess; sweating; The loving
enough; But he that is of the six
of your mind; unseen one morning,
light rain; Sometimes it happens
successfully ruses state law hot day
was cause pain, Standing in the way
of the Jews: Before the start of the
other elders; The center of the motion
picture crew especially as part of its sheath;
the propaganda; He was bright;
a torch in front of this mountain,
from the same fortune-telling on the
shore of a naked man in her wings,
protection to the body of the stomach
of course, the skin from the scroll,
up to half of weird Asian mountains
it would be the place where the
Medical princess is a criminal
Sep 30, 2018
Sep 30, 2018 at 2:51 AM UTC
How am I ravish’d! when I do but see
The painter’s art in thy sciography?
If so, how much more shall I dote thereon
When once he gives it incarnation?
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I will, for I can, go beyond my station now
Wherefore should I be confined? And how
You will wonder at me in the future,
Which I shall make my present, forgetting the suture
That has held my mouth - It is not a scar;
And I have a million things to say as they are,
Or as they might be - I will ape Almodóvar
And outshine Solovjov, and will I go far!
I will be She of the next generation;
But I must get beyond this station
I must move beyond the static,
From the bedroom to the attic,
And from thereon, to the world,
When my courage has unfurled;
And I will seize this with both hands
And deal you wonder, charm and reprimands:
I will paint you images, and write you songs,
Celebrate your joy, and right your wrongs,
Pick at the intricacies, and throw the obvious,
Show humankind as honest and oblivious,
And I will do this all, and watch me so -
I just need to ready, set, and go.
Mar 23, 2022
Mar 23, 2022 at 8:43 PM UTC
Amazing mornings
are when you are left
smiling all day long.
Predicting, Anticipating and dreaming
what's coming thereon
Dec 25, 2017
Dec 25, 2017 at 3:33 AM UTC