{"id":724,"date":"2007-11-25T21:20:46","date_gmt":"2007-11-26T02:20:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/2007\/11\/25\/mute\/"},"modified":"2007-11-26T15:11:55","modified_gmt":"2007-11-26T20:11:55","slug":"mute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/2007\/11\/25\/mute\/","title":{"rendered":"mute"},"content":{"rendered":"

[A casual reading of this piece may suggest that it is politically incorrect; in fact, it is, but not in the way it may at first appear to be. Each stanza is supposed to have four lines, but some of them are too long to post correctly; that means each short “line” is the end of the preceding line.]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The mall is fairly jumping and the background music’s playing
\nand the kids are in and out of everywhere
\nand the merchants have their goodies out and the shoppers
\nprowl for bargains and the oldies sense there’s something in the air<\/p>\n

See the Season’s decorations, green and red and gold are garlanded
\nand the artificial snow is all prepared
\nand the Santa suits and the elves are out and the shoppers
\nsniff for the pricing drops and the babies’ cries are raising tempers there<\/p>\n

Well a busker stands on the corner where he’s out of the way of everyone
\nand he plays his plaintive song of Silent Night
\nand he sings it in a ragged voice that sounds for the world so out of place
\nthe security guard looks like he wants a fight<\/p>\n

So the guard moves in and the crowd clears off\u2014well the nerve of the guy
\nand his little cough to come to the mall and spoil a mood like that
\nSo while the busker packs his stuff the security guard just pushes him out
\nto the cold before the guy can pass the hat<\/p>\n

And it’s stories like that make the season bright and stoke the shops all through the night
\nand to heck with the poor and homeless filthy buskers
\nthis darkling time of brotherly love is for the genteel turtle dove
\nso let’s not waste it on those dirty others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[A casual reading of this piece may suggest that it is politically incorrect; in fact, it is, but not in the way it may at first appear to be. Each stanza is supposed to have four lines, but some of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,7,3],"tags":[169,170,171,156,133],"class_list":["post-724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-experiment","category-mild-mannered-opinion","category-poetry","tag-christmas-season","tag-commerce","tag-rhyme","tag-rhythm","tag-satire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}