[Newspoetry] Fraying Fragments of Christmas Carol

[emerick at chorus.net]

FRAYING FRAGMENTS OF CHRISTMAS CAROL

Once upon a time, on a Christmas long ago,
I could buy everything but a home or a car,
with only a simple understanding of things:
lamp, nightlight, clock, telephone, radio, tv,
record player, stereo, vcr, cd, dvd, boom boxes,
home theaters now playing on speakers via receivers,
PC, keyset, mouse, printer, scanner, laptop, PDA,
video taper, cam corder, digital camera, docker,
modem, netware, cable or antenna, server, software, game,
icebox, ice-cube maker, ice-cream maker, water-softener,
vacuum cleaner, hand(held) vacuum, shampoo carpet cleaner,
sewing machine, clothes washer/dryer, dish washer,
furnace, hot water heater, space heater,
range, microwave, convection oven,
grill, toaster, toaster oven, electric griddle,
waffle iron, plain iron, fondue set, coffer brewer,
electric teapot, crock pot, electric griddle,
mix-master, blender, hand(held)-mixer, salad spinner,
electric knife, electric razor (his and hers),
hair dryer, hair blower, curler set, 
illuminated vanity mirror, remote controller.

(Out of personal humiliation, I will not go out
to bare the backyard or empty the toolshed:
where successors overpower humble hand tools.)

Markets niche products for non-essential competitition -- generating creeping higher prices of customerization;
such non-customization leads to sub-optimal purchasing,
and ever lower standards of living, in the long run,
as workers try to buy the latest consumer-corrections.

One needs a life long education program,
to be a good consumer of such goods as these:
one needs to live longer to learn to consume
all these labor saving devices that save no labor,
because they displace work functions from specialists,
back onto unskilled and inept hands of consumers:
these life enslaving enhancers of parasite paradise.

One has to be Amish, I suppose, to see issues
of hyper-inflated instantaneous individualism:
Now, I want it all now my way all the time.

I ever more watch ever more shows
ever more lacking diverse originality,
replayed with all new script and cast,
prime deity stages itself as main show:
minute details of such interesting lives
jealously distract me from empty minutes
I no longer know how to fill or to own.

Dispossessed zombies frighten us more,
than the possessed maniacs of property,
as property possession displaces soul:
none will know to whistle his own tune.

There is possession for you to see in me,
I wouldn't give up a single luxury good:
every luxury becomes neurotic obsession:
compulsion strangles reasoned necessity,
such blurring needs no introduction to us:
I aver aged confusion after ages of anxiety --
I hate my illness but I more fear me cured:
what shall I ever do, whatever shall I do?

Thanks for never bothering,
to rolling thunder, where unrolled,
might be (th)underware beneath farting seat,
thanks for listening, as much as not, or not,
fraying fragments of Christmas carol roil,
the biggest night in each year births
a mewling swaddled baby for another year.
Donald L Emerick