The Night After Christmas
'Twas the night after Christmas, when all through the house
Was an orgy of presents, worth more than... the house;
The Xbox was stuffed up the chimney with care,
For fear that the repo-man soon would be there;
My mind, it was pondering, while laying in bed,
A vision of bankruptcy danced in my head;
And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just barely survived this consumerist trap,
When out in the yard there arose such a clatter,
I fell out of the bed; several ribs did I shatter.
Away to the window I limped like a mule,
Still drunk as a fish, from the tidings of yule.
The moon on the roof of my new minivan,
Gave a lustrous sheen you just can't buy in a can,
When, what to my grog-fuddled eyes should turn up,
But a furniture van, with eight dwarves in the truck,
With a little old driver, so deceitful and slick,
I guessed at that moment, "He's probably named Nick."
More rapid than vermin his movers they came,
And he blasphemed and cussed, as he called them by name;
"Now, Tony and Angelo! Vincent! Emilio!
Go, Raymond! Rosario! And Danny and Guido!
I want half on the front door and half on the side!
We need this crap moved by a quarter to five!"
And then, in a twinkling, I heard from the room
The scraping and prying of objects removed.
As I cradled my head, and was turning around,
Into the foyer Nick came with a bound.
He was dressed all in black, the irreverent weasel,
And he sported some pipes 'bout the size of Vin Diesel;
A bundle of tools he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a shyster, or a lawyer on crack.
His eyes—they were sunken! his dimples unmerry!
His cheeks were like hockey pucks, his nose—frickin' scary!
His tight little mouth was drawn up like a noose,
And the look on his face said "I'll cook your goose.";
The stump of a gun he held firm in his hand,
Left no dangling question 'bout who was the man;
He had a hard face and a prominent belly,
That shook, when he laughed like a bowl of spaghetti.
He was alarmingly grim, a right nasty old elf,
And I whizzed in my boxers, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I that I may turn up dead;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And stole all our presents; the contemptuous jerk,
And raising his finger in the mid of his hand,
He asked for my credit cards, and said I was banned;
He sprang to his truck, to his thugs gave an order,
And they made for the hills, like those folks near the border.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
"Some things may be priceless, but debt just ain't right."