Another Christmas Ghost
Another Christmas ghost, another holiday to toast the people you
envy, loathe, emulate in the perpetual quest for Ponce de Leon’s libations of
mendacity.
Another year to write our Christmas canards to family and friends,
never once considering ancestry and etymology…
Another horde of Christmas ghosts to speak money falsehoods by candlelight;
in suburban confessions, sucking radio saccharin, broken homes, abused and
murdered children,
smoldering bridal chambers and creosote soaked bed curtain fragments;
water damage, or costly parties, alcoholic mishaps
and mistletoe tacked above smoky doors, rattling in crone cackle.
Gather round the truncated Tannenbaum, glowing like gaslight harlots.
Step right up, oh Christmas tree, in a former republic where over 30 million souls
celebrate their
survival in poverty’s garret.
Such a stocking-stuffer: chem. trails and cancer, depleted uranium, aspartame and
gmo’s
as answers to never-ending questions posed to the demonic war machine.
How about Christmas on the Res?
Want to exchange FEMA trailers outside of the Crescent City?
Another christened ghost glowing in cigarette dark wind in a lonely town.
How many more Americans must take a mass-transit to Hell?
Another taxi bride…to nowhere?
Bob Cratchit sits near a sleeping drunk on a frosty NY park bench.
He’ll bet his lottery money that the homeless man is Fagin,
and Oliver Twist is no mere child left behind, because the king’s lies are mandated
and his brevity is his soul; he is a nitwit. His radio and television address,
can be taken by peasants in a department store or mall,
verifying the entertainment value—empty calories, in an empty purse.
How can the elite hang pagan and Christian symbols of love and renewal around their
estates,
when love to them is power, and renewal is merely profit?
Another Christmas in an undeclared empire, where proxy wars are eating young men
and women, wars as foolish as Rome’s blunders and Germany’s thunder,
amounting to mounds of dead citizens, devastated cities and countryside.
We exchange gifts, and praise the lord. We praise the lord and pass the ammunition,
but after grown women fistfight over parking spaces at supermarkets, run down other
women
walking on south Main Street, kill neighbors’ children while speeding
at the sound of a cell phone, is it any wonder, that America is a godless country?
When our duped citizens claim invasion and occupation as a right,
and cheer at a foreign president’s assassination, how can we be of good cheer
at Christmastide? For the year ends in turmoil and our species creates more ghosts.
Another Christmas, and I must ask, what if Gaspar, Balthazar, and Melchoir’s
gifts were condoms, RU-486, or a donation to Planned Parenthood?
Christmas is another Christmas ghost. The American family is another Christmas
ghost.
Another Christmas ghost, but now the third will leave America and her ponderous
chain, link by
link, hour by hour, in the cold, dark cemetery
where she has laboured for so long to reign from.
Robert Milby, of Florida, NY, has been reading his poems, public since March, 1995, and hosts four Hudson Valley poetry readings; including the popular series at Mudd Puddle Café, in New Paltz. He has published several books of poetry, and two cds. Since October, 2003, Milby and Performance Artist, Carl Welden perform as Theremin Ghosts! He is a listed poet with Poets & Writers, Inc. of NYC and serves as the Poet Laureate of Orange County, NY 2017- 2019.
Grey Cross is dedicated to exploring all aspects of experimental art and photography, creating new and innovative techniques which other artists can use to strengthen their own work. He is a climate artist, exploring themes of climate change. He is also the creator of the Assimilation Art Movement. Through immortalartist.com Grey Cross pursues his work across a wide spectrum of artistic mediums. with an emphasis on teaching artists to utilize today’s social networks to further their own art and reputations. His partner Billy Martin (aka Poppy Z Brite) is a well known author and trans-advocate.
This poem sheds a very critical light on what Christmas means this year – not in terms of what Christmas should be, but how Christmas actually is all across the world when American hegemony is at work. It is a testament to all of our failures, both foreign and domestic, and worst of all, how our policies betray the true meaning of Christmas, which is to advance love and peace in the world. Milby’s portrayal of this year’s Christmas is searing. He holds up a mirror so that we can look at ourselves as a nation and question our true motives. A very powerful piece from a master of the poetic word. One could expect nothing more from such a conscientious, as well as a controversial, poet such as Milby, as only Milby himself could carry the torch just a few more steps and deliver such an earnest piece of criticism.
Harvey Havel
Albany, New York
“Another Christmas Ghost” is a very dark piece in a very dark time; a catalog of sins the American tradition of seeing ourselves as “exceptional” blinds us to. What tragedy and unspeakable suffering we visit upon ourselves and the rest of the world. The question we should all ask is: Why even have a country if you don’t care about the people who make it up? This is the dark world the Empire of Greed and Fear has given us…