Caught under, in a crawling shell, with armoured carapace

Urban defenders, errant bear brash contactless society

Blank faces rebate vibes, brand rigid hard estrangements

They counter-factually drive their sorry heartbreaks disengagement,

 

Streets throng a corpus covering, paving, Christmas precincts

Mowing and moping gloomily for reasons non-empathic

Staring out iron glamours upon this frosty brittle day

Shooting-up on inanimate things, getting inner-glow that way,

 

Hangings in retail windows, mock these ghosts of empty men

And women; as if were grit stones circled round a pagan fire

Framed in the flames’ tight fearsome faces viscerally glare

Flicker half-human shadows – of sad humans unaware.

 

Maybe a clasp of hands ties up some matrimonial knot,

Or a promise of; or merely dating, onto something hot,

Features a lonely sign, and furtive, willing to move concession

Elsewise a moratorium, blunt empathic walled partition

 

The first one who would cut some slack and to dare greet another

Awarding a Christmas kiss that kindly blesses; celebrator;

Weakens, explodes, high edifice between him and his brother

Or sister; and surly Saturnalia circus games would rather

 

Pronounced is high insular distance in a mordant asseveration

By glance askance at human open heart endeavours;

No will should Bible types commiserate, but Herod’s grisly game

Reverberates embattling against The Kingdom’s doors

 

Culling of Innocents loitering laughing round the loot-fed malls,

Condemns to childhood sacrifice on selfhood’s ancient crime,

Sped along lightly, parent-led, unshepherded, unclaimed,

With poor consideration in The Season’s empty toys,

 

Harder for kin to get to know a bounteous Lord of Love

When the world’s acclaimed a Pandemonium, place of push and shove

And parents gird their loins, propounding standard social models

Their ways of combat sought for means to stave off mortal troubles

 

So long as the commerce cornucopia glows its silver bauble

Retains, not bursts, might salad days commend its long pretence,

Gladsomely hearts now indolent shall melt them, turn them humble

Whenas a time of need shall serve our meed, love bringing gratitude