Many thanks to the Trail Baboon readers and writers who gave me some extra time to combine work with holiday rituals this week. Steve, Joanne in Big Lake, Barbara in Robbinsdale, Jim in Clark’s Grove, and Beth-Ann made my Christmas brighter with their engaging guest posts.

But this morning for the sake of entertainment the contrarian side of my brain started imagining the opposite sort of scene to the tune of Clement Moore’s famous “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” which needs to be parodied regularly anyway as part of our holiday tradition. Unfortunately time has run out, so I’ll have to rely on you to supply the final lines:

On the night before Christmas, our house was in ruins.
Invaded, it seems, by a pack of baboons!
Though our stockings were hung by the chimney with care.
The baboons pulled them down and tossed stuff in the air.

They were covered in fur, from each head to each toe,
But their rumps lit the room with a fierce crimson glow.
They dismantled our tree in a riotous scene
Leaving pine needles piled under branches of green.

All the snowmen and angels were pulled from their shelves.
The baboons were unkind to our reindeer and elves.
What they did to our ornaments – that was obscene!
Left untouched, by the way? Our nativity scene.

But their eyes were ferocious! Their noses were flared!
Did I mention their bottoms were wickedly bared?
Every gift was torn open and played with and busted.
Baboons in the house really shouldn’t be trusted.

And as they were leaving with screeching and whooping
(I’m sure in the yard I’ll find several were pooping)
I didn’t lament all that savaged décor
Because that’s not what Christmastime ought to be for.

And here is the place where I’m stymied. I’m blocked.
The muse is gummed up like a Christmas tree, flocked.
So get out your pens. Write it florid or terse,
and end this short poem with just one final verse.

A few lines of ultra-light verse for the Friday before Labor Day.

The Summer’s almost over now.
The season slipped away.
That’s why I’m leaving poems
on my schedule for today.

I’m leaving after lunchtime
and I won’t be back at all.
I’ve got a meeting to attend
due east of West St. Paul.

It has to do with hamburgers
and chips and cheese and beer.
A very urgent meeting, yes.
If not, I would stay here.

It’s all about the water
in the lakes where people play.
inflatable flotillas
might be launched. It’s hard to say.

I’ll have to handle worms today
and poles and fish and dirt.
It could get very messy.
I will have to change my shirt.

My sacrifice is willing.
As to that, please have no doubt.
That is why I’m leaving early.
I’ll be working. But I’m out.

Ever cut out early on a late summer Friday?

Since I happily made a big fuss over the birthday of cockroach and cat poet Don Marquis a few weeks ago, it would feel wrong somehow to neglect another towering name in the pantheon of not-really-taken-too-seriously rhymers.

Today is Ogden Nash‘s birthday, born in Rye, New York in 1902.

He tried being a stock broker and a school teacher before turning to making up words for a living. It was his good fortune to live during a time when people enjoyed puns. His funny little poems made him famous. Nash was a familiar guest on radio in its heyday, though I can only imagine the pressure he was under to keep the clever quips coming. I hope it was easy for him.

Ogden Nash is best known for his very short works. As in:

Candy is dandy
but liquor is quicker.

And:

The ostrich roams the great Sahara.
Its mouth is wide, its neck is narra.
It has such long and lofty legs,
I’m glad it sits to lay its eggs.

But here he breaks the pattern, stretches it out, and gives us something that still feels true today:

I find it very difficult to enthuse
Over the current news.
Just when you think that at least the outlook is so black that it can grow no blacker, it worsens,
And that is why I do not like the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons.

And then he gets extremely wordy (and funny). At least I recognize myself in this one:

There is one thing that ought to be taught in all the colleges,
Which is that people ought to be taught not to go around always making apologies.
I don’t mean the kind of apologies people make when they run over you or borrow five dollars or step on your feet,
Because I think that is sort of sweet;
No, I object to one kind of apology alone,
Which is when people spend their time and yours apologizing for everything they own.
You go to their house for a meal,
And they apologize because the anchovies aren’t caviar or the partridge is veal;
They apologize privately for the crudeness of the other guests,
And they apologzie publicly for their wife’s housekeeping or their husband’s jests;
If they give you a book by Dickens they apologize because it isn’t by Scott,
And if they take you to the theater, they apologize for the acting and the dialogue and the plot;
They contain more milk of human kindness than the most capacious diary can,
But if you are from out of town they apologize for everything local and if you are a foreigner they apologize for everything American.
I dread these apologizers even as I am depicting them,
I shudder as I think of the hours that must be spend in contradicting them,
Because you are very rude if you let them emerge from an argument victorious,
And when they say something of theirs is awful, it is your duty to convince them politely that it is magnificent and glorious,
And what particularly bores me with them,
Is that half the time you have to politely contradict them when you rudely agree with them,
So I think there is one rule every host and hostess ought to keep with the comb and nail file and bicarbonate and aromatic spirits on a handy shelf,
Which is don’t spoil the denouement by telling the guests everything is terrible, but let them have the thrill of finding it out for themselves.

When someone begs you for a compliment, do you deliver?