Canto XCIX

Father Christmas is a Capitalist
and a bastard as well to boot. Exhibit A:
he gives the rich kids ponies and Xboxes

while all the kiddies get down the Estate
is pound shop knock offs of their actual requests-
Barbette, Transform-trons and GI James.

Though he hates Jews and Muslims even worse,
leaving them out of the giveaway completely,
a NATO carpet bombing in reverse

as he rains gifts down casual Christian chimneys.
Exhibit B: You've seen The Snowman, right?
Don't tell me that the bastard didn't see

the bitter end to come, the snowman's plight
to melt into a mush on Boxing Day.
That's why he gave the kid a scarf that night,

so that, when Frosty's soul drifted away,
the scarf would say, "Ha ha! It wasn't a dream!
It happened! Your mate's now a Slush Puppy!"

So poor kids, don't waste your letters on him,
the walking soft drink advert, write instead
to Karl Marx to redress the fat man's crime

to take the surplus from the rich homesteads
and spread them evenly to every creed-
from each according to their Christmas excess

to those according to their daily needs.

Niall O'Sullivan was born in Slough of Irish parents back in the seventies. He studied Art in Bath, dropped out and spent the next decade working as a landscape gardener before involving himself full time in London's poetry scene. Niall has released two full collections of poetry and a pamphlet with Flipped Eye and has recently been resident poet of a housing estate for the South Kilburn Speaks project. This poem is taken from Niall's blog project The Mundane Comedy which uses the terza rima form of Dante's epic to document a year of his life. Read it at themundanecomedy.wordpress.com