<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Influenza Carol<\/strong><\/p>\n A wreath at every advent calendar door, The spruce is green until the needles drop, Holly can prick as if it would draw blood, Ivy can cling as if it were the hand The mistletoe is hornier than all The Christmas cactus flowers pinkly sprout, So chop the yule log, light it with a laugh, <\/p>\n Peter Daniels<\/strong>\u2019s publications include Mr Luczinski Makes a Move<\/em> (HappenStance, 2011), Counting Eggs<\/em> (Mulfran Press, 2012), \u00a0and selected poems of Vladislav Khodasevich from Russian (Angel Classics, 2013), which was the Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation.This poem was published a very long time ago in an Oscars Press pamphlet called Breakfast in Bed, slightly revised since]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Snow<\/strong><\/p>\n I hate all films that start with snow, The cynical director, his assistant to muffle the cries of motherless fawn, I\u2019ve nothing against a good cry where Yuri will make a fresh start even though I know it won\u2019t end well, <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Carole Bromley<\/strong> lives in York. First collection, A Guided Tour of the Ice House<\/em>, published by Smith\/Doorstop in 2012. Poems recently in Magma, the North, Acumen<\/em>. Prizewinner in 2014 at Torbay, Wells, Hippocrates Prize and Manchester Writing for Children Award.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Invasion<\/strong><\/p>\n The scene-setting’s irrelevant: icy the point is, I push open the door and it’s not like I’m expecting (there’s a reason ‘Cheers’ wasn’t without battling the six-deep battalion to determine what’s loudest – of their Christmas sweaters, in the blocky graphics of an arcade game a misremembered picture of Pacman and in the instance of the door imparting the diametric opposite blips from the environs of Sam and Diane to a ‘Doctor Who’ Christmas special as the vanguard of a global invasion, and formed a new and fiendish plan <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Neil Fulwood<\/strong> was born in 1972, the son of a truck driver and the grandson of a miner. Nobody’s quite figured out where the whole poetry thing came from. Neil is married, holds down a day job and subsidises several public houses. He hopes one day to be recognised in the New Year’s honours list for his tireless efforts in this respect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Influenza Carol A wreath at every advent calendar door, no room to rest the oxen in my head: I\u2019m fasting to rebuild my stomach floor, and celebrate my crawling out of bed. The spruce is green until the needles drop, its fairy and its lights will keep us holy: after the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-twelve-days-of-christmas-2014"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7939"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23961,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7939\/revisions\/23961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nno room to rest the oxen in my head:
\nI\u2019m fasting to rebuild my stomach floor,
\nand celebrate my crawling out of bed.<\/p>\n
\nits fairy and its lights will keep us holy:
\nafter the darkest day, the world will stop
\nto sacrifice a bird and roast it slowly.<\/p>\n
\nbut I\u2019ve seen cattle browse on it for choice:
\na taste that sharpens up the jaded cud,
\npleasure that makes their brutal tongues rejoice.<\/p>\n
\nthat holds Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in prayer:
\nthey reckon times and seasons less than sand,
\nfor little lambs shall strip Jerusalem bare.<\/p>\n
\nthe gay apparel of the druid\u2019s wife:
\nit is the only bough that decks my hall,
\nmagical parasite that lives on life.<\/p>\n
\nbut central heating doesn\u2019t make a spring:
\nrounding the year, the tougher weather\u2019s out,
\ndown will come tinsel, trees and everything.<\/p>\n
\nto warm us with the burning of the old:
\nwe\u2019ve fed the seed-corn to the fatted calf,
\nI\u2019ve starved my fever, now to feed my cold.<\/p>\n
\nChristmas schmaltz, the lot of them:
\nBambi, White Christmas, Love Story, Frozen<\/p>\n
\nwith the snow machine
\nblowing fluffy cotton wool flakes<\/p>\n
\norphaned ittle girls in castles,
\na young wife breathing her last.<\/p>\n
\nand I\u2019ll make an exception
\nfor Dr Zhivago and the ice palace<\/p>\n
\ndespite the wolves, will write poems
\nin fingerless gloves, ice on his moustache<\/p>\n
\nthat she\u2019ll get in that fur-lined sleigh,
\nthat he\u2019ll breathe a hole in the ice for one last look.<\/p>\n
\npavement, fogging breath, buses
\ngrinding up through the gears;<\/p>\n
\nand walk into my local, already
\nshucking my overcoat off,<\/p>\n
\nmy own leitmotif or a smattering
\nof studio audience applause<\/p>\n
\nfilmed in Nottingham) but a path
\nto the bar would be a damn good start<\/p>\n
\nof office-disgorged twenty-somethings
\nlocked in self-competition<\/p>\n
\nthe decibel level of their conversation
\nor the offence to the eyeballs<\/p>\n
\nhand-knitted approximations
\nof reindeer and elves, rendered<\/p>\n
\ncirca the year most of them were born,
\nas if their grans had used as pattern<\/p>\n
\nand decided to lumber him
\nwith an alkie’s nose and a pair of antlers;<\/p>\n
\nclunking into its frame
\nand the swivelling of eyes<\/p>\n
\nof being where everybody knows
\nmy name, the pop-culture radar<\/p>\n
\nand Norm and Cliff, and a real ale pub
\non Canning Circus shifts dimensions<\/p>\n
\nwhere rat-a-tat sci-fi exposition
\nposits reindeer-centric sweaters<\/p>\n
\nthe Cybermen having reflected on
\ntheir abject trouncing last time round<\/p>\n
\nbased on this year’s John Lewis ad.<\/p>\n