Twas two weeks before Christmas, when all through my head,

Not a festive thought stirring, just sadness and dread;

Tick-tockings were going as if Sapiens don't care

That hopes for our future are filled with hot air;

Grown children were nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;

Not thinking, not growing, believing the crap,

All but the ego in a long winter's nap,

Though out on the lawn there's much chaos and clatter,

We dream in our beds like there's nothing the matter.

We don't hear the cries from the people in trouble,

We don't open shutters that may burst our bubble.

Picayune and obsessed we will soon come to know

That our lustre is tarnished, we'll reap what we sow.

And one day to my wondering eyes may appear,

A knowledge that moments before was a fear

A knowledge whose driver's not lively or quick,

But a fear that is furtive and impolitic.

Already from darkness the curses they came,

Fear whistled, and shouted, and cast them by name;

"Unseeing! Unblinking! Unhearing! Unknowing!

Unfeeling! Unthinking! Unlearning! Ungrowing!

To the ends we will scorch! To the ends we will maul!

So dash away! Dash away! Progress must fall!"

As dry crusts that before the malignancy fly,

When we meet with an obstacle, flake and deny.

So up to the ego the curses they flew,

To slay all the truth, to knock futures askew.

And as I am wrinkling, so too is mankind

Survival's suspect, expert thought much maligned.

We make our own truth from what's lying around,

We trust our own instincts, so often unsound.

Mandates dressed as fact from pretentious surmise,

Assumptions all tarnished with dogma unwise;

Unbundling the noise he diverts and distracts,

This monster called Fear he divides and subtracts.

His myths -- how they twinkle, he's simple but wary!

He bleakly imposes and grows more contrary!

He's old as all knowledge, yet knows but one thought,

There's only THIS MOMENT! Next moment's for naught.

The stump of his thinking ensnares you and me,

The future is work but the moment is free;

Implanting ideas in the head and the belly,

The future is scary and sweaty and smelly.

To stay chubby and plump, a right comfy old elf,

The ease of the Now, taking care of myself;

Then a wink of his eye and a twist of his head,

Made me recognize what's so far gone unsaid;

Unselfish tomorrows create lots of work,

And this is, it seems, where Fear likes to lurk,

But No! It is not the work that we fear,

But the unavowed threat that my end is near;

Tomorrow's reminder: each day that goes by,

It's one less day to the day that I die.

So we'll live for today, we'll worsen our plight,

Unknowing. Ungrowing. Happy Christmas. Good Night.