Slam Poet Christmas Message: David Lee Morgan

Slam Poet Christmas Message: David Lee Morgan

In a special series for Huffington Post UK Culture, some of the country's finest performance poets have recorded exclusive end of year messages. You can read a copy of David's poem below.

David Lee Morgan, 63, Crazy Santas Occupy The World

How long have you been performing poety?

A bit over half a century

What is your poem about?

The same thing every poem is about: love.

Who is your favourite poet, and poem?

Heiner Müller, Hamletmachine. I can only read the English translation, but the power of the work still comes through.

Where can we see you perform?

Next feature is on 14 December at 'Kiss the Sky', at the Kiss the Sky Bar on Pond Street Hampstead, opposite the Royal Free Hospital, London.

What will you be doing this Christmas?

Hanging out on the rooftop, looking for reindeer to disembowel.

Crazy Santas Occupy The World

Imagine you were this cool old guy who loved children

Truly and deeply.

Loved every beat of the way they stiff little tick tock walk and the monkey

Talk and the roar of the buzz of the whisper of the butterfly why of honey and

Wonder and thirsty hunger they give you their hand with everything in it, and

Your heart lurches into give me a place to stand and I will move the universe,

Squeeze it down into the perfect toy,

To light the smile inside your I would give

You anything imagine this multiplied by every newborn smile in a heartbreak

World if you could be santa for every boy and girl imagine a magic workshop

Powered by twinkle of the eye drive quantum indecision and reindeer jive

Every elf in all eleven dimensions drugged and demented but working with

Manic precision a just-in-the-nick-of-time engine

(That’s why they call you saint nick),

And in the back of the sleigh a bag big enough to carry its weight

In wishes this is it, the delicious impossible minute when every child on the

Olanet is given the one perfect gift that says this is your world

– and you belong in it.

Imagine you could do this one wonderful thing.

But for the rest of the year that was all you could do

And the toys would go out and be used up and worn out and broken

And that was good, the way it should be, that was why you would build them

Toys were made to be broken, not children

And in the war torn days of the in-between year the names would change but

it was always king herod’s reign and his soldiers would go from door to door

with bloody swords while you all worked on through tears and horror knowing

you could never make it right no matter how magical that one perfect night.

What would you do?

Would you go on working?

When you could only give the one perfect minute

Better than nothing and who can argue with arithmetic

Or would you go crazy with the weight of anger and grief

Would you feel responsible, would you feel like a thief

Living a life so sweet, full of hard work done well

When so many children are living in hell

Some people can’t ever get enough

Give them a minute and they want eternity the kind who can never be happy

with even a scrap of cruelty they go crazy at the thought of one child dying a

needless death they can’t rest they gotta be moving doing making more than

a difference making everything different.

These are the

Crazy santas who never give up,

Crazy santas mad with love,

Crazy santas

Get up at the crack of dawn work boots on march out onto the field into the

street get beat fight back get shot at don’t stop live life hot-wired crazy santas

are dangerous but it’s a dangerous world some people can’t help fighting back

whenever they see the weak attacked they live like champions in the army of

the never-had-a-chance.

Some of them pick up the gun.

Some of them live like saints.

All of them are powered by love.

All of them make mistakes.

Some say we need more magic minutes that’s the best we can do

But I believe we need to reach out for eternity we need to be

Crazy santas who never give up

Crazy santas mad with love

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