He went to scratch inside his ears
only to find hair blocking what he would normally hear.
 
He went to blow his nose
only to find lots and lots of hair with each blow.
 
The hair grew in; the hair grew out; 
the hair played pinochle in his ears and around his snout. 
 
The hair grew long and traveled from ear to ear
giving his bald pate combed over hair.
 
The nose hair grew out and about 
growing bored just to be in his snout.

It traveled up and down and all over his back
and moved on down to tickle his butt cr___ "Oh, don’t do that!"
 
The man wondered what would make him feel more chipper.
His wife said, “For Christmas, you get an ear and nose clipper.”

Things I wish I had
said but which I hope
the kids know, “I love
you two kids more than
anything else in the world,
but I love your mom (who
sits across from him and
the two kids) even more
than anything else in the
world including you two
even though I love you
two more than anything
else in the world except
for your mom.”

So, the state denominational
judicatory sent out its seasonal
e-greeting which goes something
like Merry Christmas followed
immediately by links to suicide
prevention hotlines in English
and Spanish along with practical
tips for surviving the holidays.
Helpful, yup, not very poetic but
helpful, kind of like mom telling
you “I love you. Now, put on your
rubber boots, wear the scarf we
gave you last Christmas and zip
up your jacket before you go out.”

undoubtedly, the birth took place
      in nazareth not bethlehem and 
           egypt lies way, way too far away
 
for an additional journey (spoiler,
      they didn’t take the first one.) 
           and the birth took place at home

(really? who knows?) not in a stinky 
      stable although, there were smells 
           there, too, for sure. “then what 

about the three wise men and the 
      shepherds and the cattle and 
           sheep, etc., etc., etc.?” asked the 

king of siam (which he really, un-
      doubtedly, didn’t do, but the etc. 
           stuff works for effect); and so, the 

whole thing is more like a divine memoir 
      than literal history because some-
           one said, “don’t ever take a memoir 

as gospel (that’s funny), because it 
      isn’t objective. it’s all from a subjective 
           perspective,” which of necessity 

it is. so do we toss the baby with 
      the bathwater, and that, undoubtedly, 
           wasn’t very clean either? are you kid-

ding? that makes the whole thing 
      that much more incarnational be-
           cause there was wisdom from the 

past and wish fulfillment in the his-
      torical present (and don’t forget the 
           contributions from the historical future) 

and very human dreams and you 
      could almost hear the storytellers 
           and scribes and poets saying that 

there is faith and hope in the mystery 
      of birth in the dank, darkness shed-
           ding a bit of light on the eternal mys-

tery of Love, and why in the world 
      wouldn’t preachers and teachers 
           want their parishioners and students 

to ponder a much richer, deeper, more 
      mysterious meaning to the sturdy, 
           middle-eastern fabric of a tale of Truth?

Back in the day, a man and his wife play-
     ed Monopoly with the wife of the chair 
          of the psychology department. She was 
incredibly competitive but no compet-
     ition for the King of Get Out of Jail 
          Free cards. The talking heads wondered 
why such a vindictive, uncaring person 
     would offer gifts to such unworthy per-
          sons. It was concluded that because the 
person is who he is that it’s just his 
     little thumb in the big eye of the country 
          as he exits stage left — an indiscriminate 
assault on the rule of law is how a talking 
     head put it. Seriously, like that's even 
          news anymore, thought the man. On the other 
hand, the wife of the chair of the psycho-
     logy department usually graced the couple 
          with a bottle of wine for them to sip as 
they played all those many years ago. Strange, 
     thought the man, all these years later, 
          I don’t ever remember refilling her glass.

He decided to get a cup of coffee 
          at the drive-through window of the 
     gourmet coffee shop across the 
               street from the eye clinic, so he 
 
pulled into a parking lot that seem-
           ingly covered the entire expanse of 
     the earth in part from New York City 
                to San Francisco with ruts as big as 
 
the Grand Canyon and mounds of 
          broken-up blacktop as tall as Mt. 
     McKinley along the way. The parking 
                spaces had long ago departed for 
 
Shanghai. He passed a boarded up
          window of what had been a Brazilian 
     Steakhouse, a defunct Dollar Store
               and the welcoming sign of the store-
 
front hyper-evangelical church that 
          had once been a Family Video with 
     a porn section for adults only. He 
               maneuvered his way around the 
 
geography without getting a flat 
          or throwing the wheels out of line 
     like he used to be worried about 
               on the winding climb and descent 
 
on the one lane dirt road from 
          Phoenix to Roosevelt Dam, pulled 
     up to the window, ordered a 
               medium coffee and headed back 
 
home humming the tune, “They 
          Paved Paradise and Put Up a 
     Parking Lot,” which reminded him 
               of his old Kentucky home.

The high school senior got in the car
and asked his father, the driver, if he
had finished the parent’s part of the
scholarship application. The papers
sat on the bench between them. The
high school senior looked at the un-
finished paperwork and then heard
his dad say while choking back tears
that he was sorry, oh, so sorry, but
that he just couldn’t complete the
application. The high school senior,
with fear in his eyes, looked at his
desperate father. They drove home
in silence.

Sure, exaggerations were made 
     about the miraculous birth taking 
          images of a young woman noted 
 
in the Old Testament and making 
     it into something spiritually special 
          but it was, you see, a marker point-
 
ing beyond itself marking all births 
     as spiritually special; it was a ling-
          uistic image pointing to a caring, 
 
loving spiritually enlightening reality, 
     so you see, the thing that was so 
          special, which we often miss, is that 
 
in the marrow of our bones, in the 
     deepest crevices of our hearts, in 
          the folds of our brains is Love.

The daddy
of all
lunatics
attracts
lunatics
like
flypaper
spinning
round
and round
in a restaurant
without
screens
on the
windows.
Other buggy
bugs
have flown
out
the window
on their
way
south
without
glances
back
at
the daddy
of all
lunatics,
but even
then,
there are
still some
luna-ticks
crawling
around the house
as the clock
winds
down
on the house
with no
screens

on

the

windows.

“It’s time for the magic to come out of things,”
she said in reference to Christmas things.
Did she mean go away or show its stuff?
“It’s time to enter the mystery of things,”

she said in reference to eternal things.
Magic/mystery/mystery/magic. What isn’t
a mystery? But magic? Conjuring illusion?
Way too much of that going on. Maybe she

meant that magic should go away while my-
stery is here to stay and that we should enter
with anticipation of exit. It’s the winter solstice;
it will grow dark quickly and the dark will last

longer than any other day of the year. We will
enter the mystery of the darkness to ponder
and wait just as they did at Stonehenge
for the returning, mysterious glimmer of light

— the marvelously mysterious eternal nature of nature.