Twas the Night Before Christmas

Inspired by Clement Clarke Moore's classic poem, also titled “A Visit from St. Nicholas"

Twas the Night Before Christmas

When all through the flat,

Not a creature was stirring,

Not even the cat.

The stockings were hung by the heater with care,

Lighting the filthy fireplace we wouldn't dare.

The parents were snuggled and warm in their beds

While visions of school-buses drove in their heads.

My mother in her pjs and dad in his shirt

Had just dozed off, to sleep off dessert.

When out on the street there rose such a racket,

I sprang from my desk and threw on my jacket.

Away to the window I zipped like the Flash,

Looking outside, expecting a car crash.

I saw street lights reflected on fresh-fallen rain,

Damp moss, slick roads, and rusted road drains.

And what, to my wandering eyes should appear,

But a hovering motor home and eight hybrid reindeer.

With a weighty old driver, yet so lively and slick,

I knew in a moment he thought himself Saint Nick.

More wild than bikers on their cycles he came,

And his sleeves held more tricks than a cheating card game!

"Oh darn it, oh darn it. I think it's broken."

He swore. "the shop'll be closed in the mornin'."

He glanced at the house, at the door, and the top of the wall,

and spotted the tools for an overhaul.

As burglars check for cameras before they break in,

"Santa" checked the perimeter with a flick of his chin.

So up to the front door quietly he sneaked,

Except for when the floorboards creaked.

And then in the rustling I heard at the door,

The scratching and grinding of jams and bores.

As I grabbed Dad's gun, and was turning around,

Through the front door Santa came in a bound.

He was dressed in dark red,  from his head to his boot,

And his clothes were all trashed with grease and soot.

A bag of plunder he slung on his back,

And he looked just like a beggar, just opening his sack.

His eyes, they darkened, his wrinkles were sinister.

His cheeks were like canyons, his nose like a mountain.

His thin lips were creased like paper,

And the beard of his chin was ashen like slush.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

Smoke poked my throat like thorns in a wreath.

He had a small face and a bouncing round belly,

That shook when he laughed, and he made the room smelly.

He was chubby and fat, a right creepy old fart,

And I hacked when I saw him, and it gave him a start.

A wink of his eyes, and a twist of his head,

Soon told me to know I had everything to dread.

He said not a word, and set to his work,

and ate the milk and cookies, the old jerk!

Stepping too close to the sensors beside his nose,

He set the alarms blaring, in mid-bite he froze!

He sprang out the door, wrapped tool box in hand,

and tried the engine to get out of this land.

But I heard the sirens, and smirked as he stood in plain sight,

and watched them arrest him on that cold winter night.