The Christmas Epitaph Poem by Christos R. Tsiailis

What are you, Christmas?
Building up your legendary come-back year by year,
Always on the last three months,
In commercials,
through verbal anticipation, in decorated streets,
On joyful wrappings dazzling lights
glitters around me
What are you, now?
Are you a volcano day

of jolly arrangements of lava

and Las Vegas eruptions?

What have you been?
What have you been for them peoples?
What have you been for me?
You have been something for my house, I must admit.
But nothing, nothing for my room!
You have done nothing, nothing for my soul,
You have done nil, nil for my health!

What art thou, Christmas?
Would you hear me in Shakespearean riddles,
In a Freudian myth?
25th December, I know, you have been that,
That has been you,
But for that date what have you done?
Have you enhanced it, made it merrier?
For some, yes. Even perhaps for many a western world,
With so many turkeys in distress.
You have enchanted it.
25th December, a dolly charcoal burning of my thoughts.

But I cannot forget.
No, no, nothing can make me forget.
25th December.
“Is your name Christos? ”
I can’t forget.
They don’t let me forget.
“Wow! Today is your name day! ”
And I should be so happy.
Christmas, the merry lolly dolly day tailored to my being.
And what have you done for me, my soul, my mind, my place inside my oversized shoes?
What have you done for my omni-ceased inspiration during these days?
Nothing, nothing for my ever licking perspiration over wishes for my damned name
Christos
Christmas
chrisimon
chrisma
All Greek creeks creeping inside my red veins.

What are you, Christmas?
Winter, shouldn’t my complexion whiten?
But like the shadow of a dead Jesus epitaph
in a church yard
three months later just before Easter,
as I pass under it,
I am darker as I approach this weird Christmas day,
My skin is darker
the lava - the charcoal – the decorations – the wish –
the wish is a curse – I know now!
I KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN!

Baptizing me to the rituals of death,
Indeed, Christmas, what have you done for my birth
and what for my long gone mirth?