Don't Go into the Woods

Don't go into the woods at Solstice.
There's a bear with a Coke, who'll give you a poke
And make you think you don't have enough Christmas.
There's a witch and her clan out-Jonesing the Joneses
In her gingerbread sparkles and lipstick the colour of the apple that Snow White bit.
There's a mackerel-scented Christ candle floating in a bowl of abandoned cranberries.
There's a girl in a pageant
Dressed as Holy Mary Mother of God in her immaculate deception
Traipsing Holy Holy around in the snow
As white as her pure heart pretends to be.
But if she's a good liver, she'll mean what she says and do better.

Don't go into the woods at Solstice.
There's an idea of joy as easy to swallow
As a golf ball, washed down with curdled nog made from the egg of a dragon.
There's a giant with nose hair
Fashioned into a bouffant comb-over, only to hide
That he's been crying, because the children will play in his garden
But none will be his forever.
There are evil squirrels who do voices for anime features about
Superheroes named Alvin, Theodore and Simon.
And the elves spell evel with two "e"s.

Don't go into the woods at Solstice.
You'll see yourself
Reflected in the frost-crazed cover of a mineral lake.
And you'll go blind trying to carve your ideas about peace, hope, joy and love
Into an old-growth forest that's been devoured by beetles
Because the winters are never cold enough any longer.
And those who read them before they fall
Will dismiss them as derivative, and turn back
To classic carols, digitally re-mastered onto melba-toast rounds
With smoked oysters for entertainment.

Don't go into the woods at Solstice
Because you might not believe them.
You might just open your eyes and see the sky still clear over the trees
And realize
That twenty days or so of overdoing just about everything
Can't really hurt anyone who isn't hurting already.
But why do it anyway?

Don't go into the woods at Solstice.
Go into the world, go into your home, go into the street.
The woods will be there another night
When daylight is nearer.
And the bear and the witch and Snow White and Holy Mary Mother of God and the dragon and the giant and the squirrels and the anime chipmunks and the elves and the beetles and the oysters will still be there too.
Only it's possible you'll find
That they are just as afraid of you as you are of them.
Don't go into the woods.

Question: Why do it anyway?

mompoet - spinning toward solstice