Nick John Whittle

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The Best Poem Of Nick John Whittle

For Whom Christmas Won't Come (Dylan Thomas Parody)

‘Twas the night before Christmas in the small provincial town,
Soulless and starless,
With a dank reputation for brawls, bare bottoms and bakeries.
Not a creature was stirring
Except Jack the monstrous crow-black cat;
Perched high on La Cuff hill with a dead mouse in his mouth
And a small bell under his chin, for good measure.
And on the very same hill,
Mr. and Mrs. Plum the loneliest of lonelies
Beneath a knitted quilt sit in their car
And wait and wait with stirring anticipation
For no-name thunderbolt lovers
To bring them a small glimpse of windy pleasure.
To this end Mrs. Plum hangs her stockings from the rear view mirror.

Look. The houses in the estate sleep darkest before dawn,
See their dead-forgotten gluepot lawns
And single-use pink scooters nibbled by wheezing foxes.
The children are nestled all snug in their beds
With a jelly-filled flush and wide-hipped certainty
That their every whim and wish will soon be served hot and sugary.
And in the muffled, ditchwater-dull dreams,
And resentful lace-curtained bedrooms of their parents,
Married and otherwise,
We hear the rustle of the eiderdown
And rhythmic kiss-me-quick peel of the coil-sprung mattress
As mama in her flannelette kerchief
Is once again drenched in disappointment.
Tomorrow she will take out her frustrations on Facebook.

Listen. On Cherry Walk, a bread-pudding baby cries colicky
And wakes its red-raw mother
Who convinces herself that nighttime wake-ups are a blessing.
Yet all the while she dreams of a balsam bath
And a sit-down, slap-up meal.
At the very same moment, Ivor Mallory, fidget and smoker (retired)
Chokes on his left lung and dies unseen
In the middle of the open-plan, fitted-kitchen-melamine
Of his 1950s rented semi.
'A quarter of a million built in one year
And not one with a damp proof membrane, ' he murmurs,
Before settling down to his long winter's nap.
An Ashman by trade, he leaves behind three salbutamol inhalers
And a house fit for refugees.

His funeral will be held on Tuesday.

Soon, after the baby is fed and put back to bed we hear:
Above the once more cotton-quilted, silk, black-talcum-covered night
A quiet, whispered voice
Which can only belong to one not long deceased:
'Remember me, my dears.'
And then we watch as Ivor Mallory departs out of sight
To the great heave-ho-dustbin in the sky, his eyes full of tears,
Leaving us in the stale dawn yawning twilight
With the tick-tocking of the clock of humanity,
Sounding out for all the other people
For whom Christmas will not come this year:
The fishers,
The farmers,
The nurses (not the doctors) ,
The undertakers,
The soldiers in their rat-a-tat bunker,
The seamen in their salt deep Davy dark submarine,
The sick and the poor,
And up on Mill Street, the young policeman's widow,
Reaching over for her husband, tall-as-the-clock-tower,
Taken from her all too soon.

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