Christmas & Easter (unexpurgated)

  CHRISTMAS  ---------------------------------------  EASTER
(four verses for each season, reflecting Childhood, Teens, Parenthood, Maturity.
in the "tanka" style)

CHILDHOOD

A time of plastic                                            I remember when
toys and plastic jolliness                                Easter was a hard-boiled egg
but mam baked a cake                                  hand-painted and rolled
and left the oven wide                                  downhill in the spring-day sun:
to warm up the house inside.                        such simple fun, back then.

TEENS

A bottle of pills                                              The local preacher
washed down with mother's sherry              gave us Pascal hammered nails
simply made me ill:                                        in gory detail
a paralysed half-coma                                    as lurid entertainment
then sick for christmas merry.                      to our laddish front-pew ears.

PARENTHOOD

Stress, and arguments,                                  The council contest
and scrimping for months & months              for kids to draw what Easter means:
for our kids' presents                                    eggs, bows, bunnies, sun
that could never match their friends'            and flowers. Embarassment
- will this season ever end?                            meant the cross of Jesus won.

MATURITY

I go with the flow                                          Easter's still an egg
and join in jolly carols;                                  from pagan times. No cardboard
there's not long to go                                    sentimental rhymes
with vodka & prozac help                              or psalms can charm away that
until next year's survival.                              argumentative hard fact.