A Christmas Poem

Hi everyone. Posting will obviously be light for the next few days as I fill my holiday obligations. So, I'll leave you with a poem written a few years ago by the fabulous Daria O'Neill of Portland.

All the world loves a movie, but in quiet dissention
A colorful creature of just two dimensions

Went creeping and crawling down Lehoya Way
When the sun had gone down and the sky had turned gray

And knelt in a graveyard by a flower-strewn tomb,
Crying and cooing in the cool dusky gloom

A little sketched hand ‘round it’s mouth cupped the thing
And lips to the turf gave a singing-song sing,

“Mr Geisel,” it whispered, “Nine years you’ve been gone
Some things since that time have gone horribly wrong.

Drugged-out ravers in tall stripey hats
Besmoiling the trademark you made for the Cat.

A character I’ve learned from my showbiz-news mailer
Might be played soon big-screen-style by Tool Time’s Tim Taylor.

Presumably not coked-up, car-crashing in jailer
Cashing in Home Improvement rerun checks for bailer

That’s no matter, for the reason I’ve come to disturb
Your eternal rest, which is so much deserved

Was I knew you would issue a posthumous bellow
If you knew what they’d done to your green grouchy fellow.

”And the tiny bright creature proceeded to murmur
As it finished, the ground grew abruptly unfirmer

The earth shook and quivered, the topsoil burst loose
And in a great roar like the bray of a moose

Who’s just drunk a vat of moose-maddening juice
From the grave sprang the doctor, whose last name was Seuss.

Nine years under had left him a corpsy-heart stiller
Blue-tinged and flesh-frayed like an extra from Thriller

A post-mortem figure to give the heart quivers
He still looked more pleasant than a living Joan Rivers.

He looked down at the confidante crouched at his knee
Who was Cindy Lou Who, now aged forty-three.

“You’ve done right to rouse me,” he growled at the old Who,
“Now we’re off to Universal—flippety-floo!”

Down Hollywood 101 lurched the dead author grim,
Turning onto the boulevard called Lankershim.

And as car screeched and swerved round the zombie and tot,
They turned right onto Universal Studios lot.

Meanwhile, unawares, in a large meeting room
A gaggle of producers uninformed of their doom

Met glasses and clinked, joyous voices all raised
“Fifty-five point one million in only three days!

The eighth-biggest weekend gross of all time!”
When in through the door, drenched in earth, leaves and slime

Burst the good deceased doctor, filled with rage inch to inch
And he screamed “What the hell have you done with my Grinch?

”The producers all gaped at the horrible sight
Each clung to the other with all of their might

Till one squeaked out, voice choked up with fright
“Your wife Audrey assured us that it was alright!

”Seuss coughed up a rat with a noise most ungroovy
And spat “Fools, my problem is not with the movie.

I don’t care that Grinch flashbacks were your main objective
Or that he was played by that one pet detective.

I don’t mind big Who breasts as a cheap eye-gaze vector,
I don’t mind the narration by Hannibal Lector.

That the Whos looked like rats is not what made my heart soured
(though they saved on the makeup when dressing Clint Howard)

Background songs by Faith Hill bothered me not one wee,
Didn’t mind that Jim’s Grinch talked like Sean Connery.

What I mind,” hissed the doctor, leaping up on the table,
“Was the way you all crapped on the point of my fable.

‘Maybe Christmas,’ he thought, ‘doesn’t come from a store’?‘
Maybe Christmas,’ he thought ‘meant a little bit more’?

Well, great goodness me,” Seuss deadly deadpanned
,Just what part of that did you not understand?

You’re selling Grinch T-shirts, Grinch video games,
Gloves, sleds and masks bear the Grinch face and name,

You’re selling Grinch vases and those Grinch snow-globe things,
Lunchboxes, backpacks, Grinch napkin rings,

Ornaments, beanbags, Grinch wrapping paper,
Grinch candles that smell and Grinch candles that taper.

That Christmas not be commercial was the point of the book!
And now I must cut off your heads with this hook.”

And with that, Dr Seuss, the distinguished demised
Unsheathed his bewildering Christmas surprise,

A device called the Choppy-Top Grinder 2X,
Designed for dismembering smug movie execs.

Seuss sawed through skull one with a gleeful carouse
While screaming “That one’s for making Blues Brothers 2000!”

Producer number two made a dash for the door
Soon his arms and his legs were in piles on the floor.

Red blood filled the air in a crimson sideshow
Crowed Seuss, “That’s for greenlighting Gus Van Sant’s Psycho!

The bisecting of the third, the next scene will take us
As it was his pitch to make Viva Rock Vegas.

Number four hit the floor as he cried “Mamma mia!”
Rocky and Bullwinkle, live-action, had been his idea.

And so it went on, with chip-chopping and blood
Till the room was knee-deep in a body-part flood

And just one lone producer, within Choppy-Top reach
Who was about to become the first blood-bellied sneetch

Choking his pleas through the dead colleague’s stench
He cried out “Don’t blame us! We were bought by the French!

First Seagram’s own us,” choked the lad, face vermillion,
“But this June we were bought off for thirty-four billion

By French company Vevendi! So do not my brain pinch,
The Germans own Kermit, the French own the Grinch!”

Undead Seuss gave a frown, this news was most vexing,
The Choppy-Top Grinder stopped grindy-two-X-ing,

With a groan it wound down with its blades, wheels and cogs
Sighed Seuss, “Well, I’m off then, to kill snail-sucking frogs.”

And he reached in the pocket of his severed-legs pants
To get a cell phone to charter a plane flight to France.

As the final exec swooned in coworker brain juice
Cindy Lou tapped the bone-exposed kneecap of Seuss.

And whispered “Hey Doc, if you’re done with this caper,
They’re printing The Lorax on unrecycled paper.”

And the moral of the tale, be you Opie, Grinch or Who,
Don’t Fuck with the Doc, or the Doc will Fuck you.

Suck on that yule log.