SHOPPING TO EXCESS

Shopping To Excess

Sunday, almost Advent,
They descend upon the city:
Urban urchins, denizens of darkness,
Rural idlers, proliferate proles.
From tenements and tower blocks,
Rural idylls, ancestral piles
to shop.

Fists full of credit cards,
Christmas cowboys heft heavy bags
Of prospective presents on a Wild West
Main drag, rolling with sweat.

A thrashing throng of thrusting limbs
Swims amid the thrum of swarming
shoppers fighting for attention
from seemingly numb checkout girls.

Yuletide cheer from carol singing
Sally Army - brassy jazz, distant Andean
Pan pipes all drowned out by ringing
and kerchinging of a thousand cash tills.