for Josh Janowiak

We left this part out on purpose, some psychotic

caroling, after some of our friends went nuts and some

went home and the rest of them went wisely to the bar.

It's Christmas time in the city. Your monolith brick apartment

vomited smoke and we felt like vomiting vomit.

We decided to wassail. Your lady dancing had gotten herself

pregnant; were you imagining her eight months swollen

on the cold molded tile of her bathroom, smoking plaintively

and pondering reopening her wrists up like last year's terrible mouth

finally starting to close? Cut to me thinking about being grabbed

by the lapels, by the lapels! and being milk maid kissed with smoky

frozen lips, the moment later spoiled by Chris miscast

as the Russian boyfriend who doesn't understand American romance.

Oh, he's always receiving mixed signals. By the time we finally

got to the pipers and their damned piping, we were mad and screaming

and I was crying and the beer bottles snowed broken glass

all over us and four stories down to the street. Final shot of the scene;

three floors down your girlfriend jerks awake, looks out

her foggy window and sees snowing shards and startles herself

by saying out loud, Oh, the weather outside is frightful!