A tangle of wires and musty glued pasta reindeers

Tumble without ceremony from the loft hatch,

It is still July

Christmas started so early this year it was 

called late Christmas 

or mid Crimbo for its proper title

People stand next to pseudo sheds and punt a tenner

For a weak lager in a festive glass

Which you can keep if you like

But no one wants the memories

They scoff down large sausages

Which are German

And made of minced yuletide

Festive gin flavoured gin ruminates under the stairs

In a dark space, fermenting like a bright star anise

a seed of crumbling blackness

We post cheap cards round the street

Hoping the neighbours aren’t in

Christmas day last three seconds of paper storms,

a Sunday roast and a hangover from bonfires

the satiated family in a celebratory limbo

Settle down and lick chocolate bunnies,

Halloween haunts the bulbs of Spring

Wrap themselves into impossible knots

And refuse to light us up