Christmas—the way bleary thousands
upon thousands of pairs of perfect
strangers avoid eye contact instinctively,
glancing instead down, and then
off to one side, relieved to alight their eyes
on the adjacent, newly repeating
citywide signs for consolation,
recreating each snowy sound and story
in the salivating mouths
of their minds—of new lives deserved
or of old adversaries reckoning;
memorable cashes of phrases recurring,
seemingly swirled randomly, but in truth, manufactured
to refresh mankind's blurry but ample
and resilient muscle memory
for preferring to remain so
spectacularly alone (united just softly enough
by fear—of death
and by awe of what's left)
and for soldiering on, simultaneously—
consumed by these empty tidbits
now piling up across the white
sidewalks and street corners
and desperate to consume
and regurgitate
and then re-consume them
all over again—at the drop of the next silver bell.
