It’s a hungry dusk. The yappy dog
barks a dank growth into our eggnogs
and the hungover elevators sulk
“They’re at it again!” to the
half-eaten ice boxes. “Hey,
little Knock Knock, you’re no joke!”
is Eggy’s wry reply (having arrived for dinner
with nothing but a jingle bell and a starched
persimmon poached with Milky Way).
December slashes its dividends
and Christmas grimly reaps (for it is
said that those who hath not worry less).
“Yes, sir!” Yet meanwhile, all along the
Bible Belt ceramic snowmen disagree.
They only accede (and with icy
hearts that rarely melt) like yappy
dogs’ yapless neighbors. They glower,
however (and they glower beigely!), over
each freshly-hewn wound that blisters into a
veritable snow angel that’s been slapped all
nasty onto their various sexless middles
and their hoary throatlessnesses.
And then, with all the doughy stealth
that each can muster, they reach up and up
into their frosted bath-cabinets for a few
penguin-covered band-aids. Thus it is
(and just as thus it always will be) when
tightly screwed-on pairs of coal-cropped,
carrot-shadowed lips are caught all but
unawares and hit like a pipe-fitter’s
rock-laden stocking with a
lusty welder’s gassy breath.
