A Convenience Store Chistmas

I spent Christmas Eve 1999 working the graveyard shift at a 7-Eleven. It was dead quiet, so I whiled away the hours composing the (until now untitled) poem below on a piece of scrap paper. That scrap paper hung from our refrigerator door for twelve years, until this afternoon, when my wife's cousin came and carted our refrigerator away in preparation for our departure from Newport tomorrow. I noticed the tattered, filthy piece of scrap paper sitting on the kitchen counter just now, and I decided that my work deserved, at long last, a wider audience than could be found in my kitchen. So I now present to my vast global blogging audience, just as I wrote it so long ago:

A Convenience Store Christmas
by Johnny Pez

Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the store
Not a customer bothered
To walk in the door

The newspapers lay
In their well-ordered stacks
And the drink fountains nestled
By beef-jerky snacks

While cigarettes stood
Upon multi-tiered shelves
In red and white boxes
Like cancerous elves.

When out of the frigid
Millenial night
My eyes were repulsed
By a hideous sight

A huge tractor-trailer
Had pulled up outside
MCLANE boldly stood out
Upon its vast side.

And out of the monster
Came two seedy men
In filthy gray jumpsuits.
They came in and then . . .

The bigger one walked up
And said with a sneer,
"Your order for ten tons
Of sunscreen is here!"

I spoke up in outrage,
"The devil you say!
We sent in that order
For sunscreen in May!"

"Take it or leave it,"
The evil man said
I wanted to take it
And bash in his head.

Instead I accepted
And signed his receipt.
He said "Merry Christmas"
And made his retreat.

Then as they departed
And drove off their truck
I called "Merry Christmas!
I hate you! You suck!"