On Christmas Eve morn (2019), my wife Jan was having high blood pressure readings, and we hied ourselves to the Baptist Hospital ER. She languished there, with not a doctor in sight, all day and into the evening and was finally admitted to a room for the night. I got her out with an hour left on Christmas Day, but of course our dinner with friends was postponed. I did not know when this poem was written on Christmas Day, that The Janch would return on New Year's Eve and also destroy that holiday, but back into the ER she went, her new meds regimen being a spectacular failure. She is home as I write this introduction, getter more stable every day. We had our belated Christmas dinner, but not before The Janch wreaked havoc on the holidays. We remain thankful to God for His healing power and steadfast mercy. We are joyful: it was a good Christmas.
The Crimson Janch
You’ve / heard of the greenish Grinch, by chance?
He’s / nothing to The Crimson Janch.
The / Grinch blows Christmas all to ‘ell;
With The / Janch, you’ll know - no - noel.
And / though it sounds exceeding cruel,
The / Janch assures you’ll know no Yule;
On / this we all must be insistent:
The / Janch makes Christmas nonexistent.
But / then again somebody said:
Why “crimson”?..and not just “red”?
Red is blood before you measure;
Crimson is when it’s under pressure.
Thus, she is The Crimson Janch;
This / color makes all Grinches blanch.
It / turns those green things white as snow,
And / “white” is Christmasy, you know.
Therefore, The Janch makes Grinches festive,
And / festive ruins and makes them restive;
A / Grinch’s most abhorred proclivity
Is to conjure up festivity.
Yes, The Janch undoes the Grinch:
It’s a cinch, she is a wench
Who can turn the Grinch’s meanness
Into mirth and sans the greenness.
The / Grinch cannot approach The Janch,
Who, perchance can staunchly stanch
The / heartiest of a Christmas spirit;
Beware the Crimson Janch and fear it!
On / Christmas Eve, no less than noonish,
We / seemed befuddled and buffoonish;
Are you asking just where we are?
Standing in the Baptist E. R.
We / look around the place, and curses!
Where’s the doctors and the nurses?
It’s a ghost town!.. where they be?!
Home, beside their Christmas tree.
The / Crimson Janch can’t cool their Yule;
These / docs ain’t anybody’s fool!
Do they do exams on Christmas,
And / run those tests that use a litmus?
Don’t make me laugh, the staff is absent,
With / not a Christmas litmus lab sent!
Jan got her essential CT scan,
From a / janitor and a handyman.
And / thus Jan morphed into The Janch:
A / Christmas tree without a branch;
A / holiday without the holly;
A / sad sack Santa with no jolly.
I went home to feed the doxie,
But The Janch was oozing moxie:
She was turning ever Janchy,
And / Christmas Day was looking chancy.
I / realized I’d missed my lunch -
Then I had an ugly hunch:
If tomorrow’s Christmas dinner,
Disappears, I’m even thinner!
The / wiener-dog and I will zing
To the local Burger King,
And / we will, for a moment, stop her
Janching hijinks with a Whopper.
That must be our Christmas meal;
Our / only hope: The Janch will heal;
On / Christmas Day, rather than
The / Janch, she will be The Jan.
The / best Jan, candidly, in the world,
And the best girl ever girled;
But / while her BP did its dance,
Our / Janny was The Crimson Janch.
Michael Roy - Dec. 25, 2019