Don't They Know It's Christmas?

Written in the first Christmas Pandemic Lockdown 2220

Awaiting the festive season sparkle and frosting glitter

Bitter muffled spittle and stubble blinded by the fog of my own breath

Paper masks tasting of yesterday halitosis

Sweet echoes whisper whistle through the empty streets

My eyes squeeze a grudging smile at the locked pub door

There’s no room at this inn

Not in this small town’s bleak mid-winter

Curling torn posters flutter despair across boarded windows

A chill withering of tomorrow courses down the gutters

Splutters its rancid stench down into the somewhere

Don’t they know it’s Christmas?

Thank you Jesus, Thank you Lord

Faded words on a faded board

Nailed to the cross upon the locked church door.

Iron palings flake black rust still as crows teeth

Beneath us there are no footprints in the snow

Yesterday is so far away and so long ago

Don’t they know it’s Christmas?