Saturn'll Nail Ya

No more dreamsicle skies:
the slicky boys have dragged
their butterfly billasongs
across the belly of the evening.
Gobbets of giblets
drip scarlet rips
down the backdrop
blue as Charlie Musselwhite
without a white line
or the muscle to get it.

And there it is, folk:
Yule,
as in Yule be sorry
and Yule miss me
when I'm gone.
All the rest
of the year
the dance is with Jupiter –
expand, man.
Now is the splinter
of our malcontent,
wedging in the pineal,
made melancholy
by the holly
and the IV
saccharine.

“O let me build mirrored
ramparts
to shield the souls
around me,”
invoking the old
wall-builder,
Saturn,
“in this, Thy season
of mirth on earth.”

I lift a drop of nog
to the noggin
and recall
where that has gotten us.
“Please, Daddy,
Don't get Drunk this Christmas”
is the only tune fitting
this saturnine samba.
Alcohol, the universal solvent,
and its pull toward insolvency
seems to be the gift
which keeps on taking.
Alcohol and gasoline
do mix
if you shake them
real hard.

So with the day's darkness
adding to the memories,
I avoid the Saturnalia
of Capricornian rutting
on bed strewn with relatives'
coats.
Despairing
but not that desperate,
let us remember surviving
saturnism --
“lead poisoning” --
from the dark father
and pray
that this is as dark
as life gets.