Category: Ontario

away in a manger
in an alley below
a girl’s giving birth
in the ice and the snow
her hair is disheveled
she has no warm clothes
needle marks bleeding
as the morning star rose

merry christmas merry christmas
life is so good
the scent of warm garbage
is inviting as food
she screams and she suffers
god wants it that way
he made eve to suffer
for curiosity’s sake

the streets are deserted
the children awake
to gifts santa brought them
while in bed they slept safe
no joy in the alley
her child lies blue dead
she wraps him in paper
and stumbles in dread

merry christmas merry christmas
a savior is born
in a night of desertion
in a poor part of town
she stumbles to her dealer
she begs for some drugs
he tells her to get busy
“find someone who lusts”

they find her in a snowbank
a crumpled up heap
“another statistic”
says the cop on the beat
“what a great tragedy”
the papers report
no one claims the bodies
“Jesus comforts”

kjg 427am 26 dec 2014

Klaus J. Gerken is on Facebook. Contact him on kgerken@synapse.net and read latest poems in Ygdrasil – a Journal of the poetic Arts.