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Monday, December 20, 2010

A CLIMATE CHANGE CHRISTMAS

by Jon Wesick


There’ll be no midnight ride in a sleigh.
The ice cap’s melted away.
No smiles for your daughters.
His workshop’s underwater.
Santa’s not coming to town.

Smog-belching SUVs
mean empty spaces under trees.
Those wanting presents
better take antidepressants.
Santa’s not coming to town.

He’s traded boots and red coat
for wooden mast and lifeboat.
He’s no longer jolly
due to man’s carbon folly.
Santa’s not coming to town.

Those bright Christmas wishes
now sleep with the fishes.
Christmas gets meaner.
His home like Katrina
Santa’s not coming to town.

With polar climate like Aruba
the elves all learn SCUBA.
The children now frown.
The reindeer have drowned.
Santa’s not coming to town.


Host of the Gelato Poetry Series, instigator of the San Diego Poetry Un-Slam, and an editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual, Jon Wesick has published over two hundred poems in journals such as the The New Verse News, New Orphic Review, Pearl, Pudding, and Slipstream. He has also published forty short stories. Jon has a Ph.D. in physics and is a longtime student of Buddhism and the martial arts. One of his poems won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists contest.
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