Happy Holly Days

Happy holly days
hippie holy days
happy Doc Hollidays
happy dolly days
snippy doily days
snappy darling days
snappish dervish daze
sippy snappy dirges
sappy hoppy urges
happy holiday mergers



Union Station Christmas Wreath

I stand beneath this
golden Christmas wreath

to take this photograph
with my picture phone.

Now, I'm not the only one
to see it... I am not alone.

Christopher T. George



Of Time and Tidings

It's Christmas week and I am driving to a local diner
to meet an old friend; Friday's snow skulks in the gutter.

Donna's CD "Best of Christmas Cocktails" plays smoothly,
Dean Martin slurring, "Winter Wunnerland." I imagine Dino

with martini clutched in hand, and I think, "Was it then
that we began to lose Christmas -- the holiday mutating

into the sell-out that it has become -- all honesty bartered
for commercial profits?" I order bacon and eggs; Dan, retired,

walking with a cane, orders omelette with scrapple on the side
-- such a proletarian meat! We've known each other forty years,

half a lifetime; we spend time talking about all the people we've known:
aye, so many passed on, but we survive. Later, driving to the bank,

I'm singing variations on "God rest ye merry gentlemen ... God pest
ye manic mental men.... Rod invest ye gentle merrymen... God rest."

Christopher T. George

How to Write Clerihews

Lewis and Clark

Lewis and Clark were quite a pair;
together, they journeyed everywhere.
They explored to the Pacific in tandem.
Yet, at the end, their deaths were random.

Christopher T. George

Per Wikipedia:

"A clerihew is a whimsical, four-line biographical poem invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. The lines are comically irregular in length, and the rhymes, often contrived, are structured AABB. One of his best known is this (1905):

"Sir Christopher Wren
Went to dine with some men
He said, "If anyone calls,
Say I'm designing Saint Paul's."

Here are some more clerihews that I have written recently:

Laurel and Hardy

"This is another fine mess!!!" Ollie'd say to Stan.
In each flick, we moviegoers expected it, man, oh man!
Eternal victims of life's pranks:
Stan, the clueless Brit, and Ollie, the bumbling plump Yank.



Elvis sang "I'm All Shook Up!"
swiveled his pelvis, didn't look up--
That was then. . . this now: it's all
Elvis sighted in every shopping mall.

The next one is not biographical but seems to fit here, given the season:

Soon, before we know, it will be another Blue Christmas!
Believe me, if you miss it, you won't miss much!
Nowadays, it's so tawdry, so indecently commercialized!
So -- hold your gifts, your offerings, whatever size!

And a couple more clerihews for good luck:

As a working poet, I always remember the example of Sir John Betjeman:
when they complained, "That's no poem!" Sir John said, "You betcha, man!"
He might have written near doggerel,
but he didn't pen it to earn his doctoral.

Siegfried and Roy

Ja, you knew better than to play with tigers
but those big cats paid your wages;
always disaster threatened
-- the sharp teeth beckoned.

Burns and Allen

You could always trust Gracie Allen
to play the dimwit, without failin' --
a lovable, clueless broad
that George and the whole world adored!