Happy Festivus
Christmas isn't just one thing
A festivus for the rest of us,
the ones who work today,
rewarded with an extra serving of
guilt and shame for not being
available all the time
for everybody else.
Shunned, banished, not allowed
to approach the inn or outbuildings
without breaching the gate.
Never regretting the summer sherbet, the silken sunlight
washing over the ebbing surf.
Drinking cold beer in the sand, salty wind
raising gooseflesh on sunburnt shoulders,
slipping away in the moonlight for romance
with the cool water gently lapping toes,
fingers interlaced, falling in step perpendicular
to the water line; pausing under the pier
for lips to swell into each other, tongues crashing over teeth
for the first time every time, world brand new
and gone while three men from the East,
wary of the beast stalking (them?) along the way,
shadows moving, changing where they walk,
before, beside, behind, inside
the men as the sun and stars
see fit the sun and
stars see, fit this story to all the rest,
traveling west under that same star
you say rises in the east. That same star,
that same old story of birth and death,
or is it death and birth?
We are all the same, we are all
pilgrims on a journey, born in a barn,
turning over tables at the temple,
starving in the desert, loved
by Mary Magdalene while fishing
for men, wanting one last really
good dinner with friends
before being nailed to the cross
you carried, naked through
the streets of public opinion
after that one who was late to dinner
and drank too much wine, the
last at supper, sold you out,
cheaply at that—one fin
over half a lucky fifty.
Sink into the ground while they fight
over what's left of you, throwing dirt
on your carcass, into your open mouth.
Go ahead and die.
Rest for three days,
climb out of that grave;
realize they're all beneath you
as you take the sky.
About the Creator
Harper Lewis
I'm a weirdo nerd who’s extremely subversive. I like rocks, incense, and all kinds of witchy stuff. Intrusive rhyme bothers me.
I’m known as Dena Brown to the revenuers and pollsters.
MA English literature, College of Charleston
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Comments (6)
I think the enjambment works.
I need to spend some time with this.
Stunning and I read it once before listening to Elliot read his then read yours again and it made all the more sense. Thoughtfully penned my friend
This is beautiful. You wove current life into the stories we grew up with and finished with raising yourself from a death you don't want! Great job!!
A striking, layered piece—personal, cultural, and mythic all braided together. I like how the contemporary guilt of work and absence slowly gives way to ritual, memory, and then outright biblical reimagining. The enjambed repetitions in that later turn feel destabilizing in a good way, mirroring the pilgrims’ disorientation and the recycling of the same old story into the present. It definitely invites dialogue with Eliot, but it also stands on its own as a lived, modern pilgrimage.
I’m curious as to whether this works in dialogue with Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi,” if this type of writing interests you, “Dust” is my brief response to “The Wasteland.” Anxious to hear from some nerds who understand the purpose of the enjambed repetition in the third (second and a half?) volta and see if it works for readers.