A Christmas Poem

I was waiting around

for Santa to come,

hoping my presents were better

than last year’s Fruit Stripe gum.

I heard shouting

out in my driveway

and thought now I have to go

give someone five the hard way.

I opened my door too quick

scaring the fur off my cat.

I saw a man staggering,

he looked drunk, dirty and fat.

“Hey”, I yelled,

making him jump.

“Holy shit!” he exclaimed

before falling in a lump.

“Santa? Is that you?”

I asked carefully.

“Of course it is you idiot,”

he shouted back, scaring me.

I helped him to his feet

and brushed off his coat.

“That’s not for you,” he said

after seeing me staring at his goat.

“What happened?” I asked.

“You look awful.”

He started swearing in 5 languages

giving me an earful.

“Some lunatic shot at me

with a rifle I gave him.

He was drinking peach schnapps

and snorting cinnamon.”

“What’s wrong with people,” he continued.

“Why can’t they be grateful?

I don’t want to give out coal,

That’s hateful.”

“I try to be fat and jolly,

laughing and grinning,

but people piss me off

and I want to send them spinning.”

“Thanks for letting me spout off,”

Santa said tiredly.

Then he whistled and his reindeer

leapt from the tree they were caught in.

“I have something for you,” he said to me

reaching into the back of his sleigh.

He handed me a package

as big as a bale of hay.

“Wait until I’m gone to unwrap it,

Enjoy and thanks for your help.”

With that he yelled “Onward”

and the reindeer were off with a jump.

When he was gone

I opened my shiny new box.

Inside I found

A year’s worth of underwear and socks.

“What the hell?”

I exclaimed.

“This is what I get

for putting out your flames?”

Then I heard Santa’s voice,

loud and booming,

“You’re lucky you got anything.

I see what you do when no one is looking.”

“Damn,” I muttered,

wishing I had a stick of gum.

I went back inside

feeling kind of glum.

I put on my new socks

and felt better.

If only I also had

an ugly Christmas sweater.

Merry Christmas 

A True Christmas Story

Usually when I have a story from my life I exaggerate the hell out of it for humor’s sake. Today I have an absolutely true Christmas tale that needs no hyperbole. I’ve been having trouble with mice getting into my trailer this winter. I plugged a hole under my sink and re-covered a spot in the living room where they were getting in. I’ve also been feeding them poison which they’re eating like candy. Still I hadn’t seen or heard one in about two weeks. Then it was Christmas.

2:30 a.m. Christmas morning I was awoken by a strange noise, like scratching and bumping around the wall behind my bed. It happened enough that I finally got out of bed and turned on the lights. I got a flashlight, shining it behind my nightstand and that’s when I saw it. Walking near my power strip was a brown field mouse dragging a piece of Dove chocolate. You may ask, “How could you possibly know it was Dove chocolate?” The answer is I could read the word “Dove” across the top of the square.

My first thought was “Am I still asleep. Is this a dream?” It was after all 2:30 a.m. But I quickly realized I had actually seen a mouse dragging a piece of chocolate. My next thought was “Where did it get a piece of chocolate from?” Suddenly it hit me. I ran down the hallway to my living room. My wrapped gifts were under my Christmas tree and there was the evidence.

My brother loves dark chocolate so I had taped a piece to each of his packages. The mouse had chewed away the foil from the piece of Dove chocolate and dragged it back the hallway into my bedroom. By the time I went back I couldn’t find him again so I figured he must have left the same way he got in. At 4:30 a.m. I finally went back to bed Christmas morning.

When I got up a few hours later I found that the mouse had nibbled at all the pieces of chocolate so it all had to be thrown away. He had also crapped on two of the packages so I had to re-wrap them.

Later in the day my brother came up to my place and we found a spot of the floor that had collapsed causing a hole between the foundation and the wall. We did a little MacGyver work, filling in the hole with garden rocks, shoring up the baseboard with a few pieces of fake wood my brother had in the trunk of his car and then covering it with a piece of left over tile from when I re-did my bathroom a few years ago.

That is my Christmas tale. If anyone from Disney or Pixar is reading this and wants to make a blockbuster movie from my story call, email, text, send a postcard, send up a smoke signal, carrier pigeon, a hand written letter on tasteful stationary, whatever. Let’s make a movie!