The Tome Beneath the Tinsel

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new message arrives
sound of an xmas chime
blue light
shining announcement

merry xmas bro
ho ho ho 🎅
👀 u on new yrs?

I put my smart phone down below,
Underneath my woke, tingling legs,
So that we can finish op’ning
Last presents which laid there like dregs.

The last one in particular
Struck me as something really odd.
It was a larger kind of thing
With a rectangular-shaped bod.

vibration and chimes
tingle through
curiosity kills the cat

happy holidays dude
u get dat 🎮
w8 till u 👀 what I got

It was not any smart device,
Rather, it was a lonesome book,
Nothing I hadn’t seen before,
But for some reason my heart shook.

This book, it did not tell a tale.
It was not that sort of fine read.
The volume was made up of words
That caused my inner soul to bleed.

These words—not ones I like to use—
On the page like the ink of truth,
Leave me hoping I can forget
The reality they do sooth.

ding-a-ling-a-ling

another text

happy holidays to you and yours
see you tomorrow
still up 4 🚗 2 wrk 2gthr? – Bob

ding-a-ling-a-ling

PS – My wife got me a new 📱

This book has a real heavy feel,
A tome of clay bricks in my lap
Filled with all these rejected words
So that we can avoid a trap.

Yet, the more I look, I can see
That this book was given this day
To me, yours truly, as a gift
To read and not to throw away.

But this was not an easy read,
The words hit me like piercing spears
Thrown at me with strong velocity
Causing me to bleed out my fears.

ding-a-ling-a-ling

Ugh! Shut that off.

Now I can read without those rings
Disrupting me from the lexemes,
For right now this book really hurts
And I need not these silly memes.

No, I need not these stupid memes
For, I find this book really hurts
Filled to the brim with tough lexemes

That dredge up strange and haunting themes
And where the hard truth ever spurts—
No, I need not these stupid memes.

These words are familiar like dreams.
The word “lonely” in this book blurts—
It’s so brim-filled with tough lexemes.

“Alone”, yes and “haunted” so screams.
“Loss”, “grief”, and “rejected”—my mind flirts—
No, I need not these stupid memes.

A book of wordy nightmare dreams,
The locution lexicon squirts
Out these really painful lexemes—

They may not fit our Christmas themes
Because they are attached to hurts—
Still, I need not these stupid memes,
But this book filled with tough lexemes.

Poet’s Note:
This poem combines text message format, quatrains in tetrameter with an ABCB rhyme scheme, and concludes with a villanelle.

© 2024 Tristan Robert Lange. All rights reserved.
First published on MyPoeticSide, December 18, 2025.

Tittu