Parody of Twelve Days of Christmas by Angela Lansbury

Affordable, Modern Twelve days of Christmas Parody by Angela Lansbury On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love sent to me 12 Christmas crackers Eleven pictures showing Ten mince pies heating Nine fruits a stewing Eight cups of coffee Seven stollen slices Six little pancakes Five doughnut rings Four Christmas puds Three French wines Two hard boiled eggs Toast and honey for tea with me. Copyright Angela Lansbury December 22nd 2016 Author's note: My draft version included: Ten squirrels leaping Nine couples dancing Six big hard boiled eggs Five pretty rings Four singing birds I just thought For an audience which is not English, change it to Four steaming puds (or puddings) Alternative Lines 6 Six eggs for omelettes or six little crumpets 3 I had three French songs instead of French hens 2 Two ringing bells I changed to two honey jars Last ! tried to end with the last line reading: a turkey and a plum tree and plums for tea I tried a Christmas tree a cup of tea some Yorkshire tea Xmas Cake And a Christmas cake just for me And Christmas cake for our tea And Christmas cake to share with me Xmas Trees Or Secular Trees For Atheists? And a Christmas tree? And a tall spruce tree (More secular - but since Christmas in the title?) How about an atheist's Christmas? On the twelfth Day of December my lover/husband/ best friend/ an atheist (the rhyme to fit the music and copy the original wording in a familiar way has to stay as 'my' plus two syllables The original Twelve Days of Christmas carol On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love sent to me A pink synthetic tree. Happy Christmas to everyone Angela Lansbury PS I typed this out as a poem with line breaks. However, the website has deleted the line breaks. I shall have to devise a way of writing the poem in Word or Pages, photographing the page on a mobile phone, copying it into photos on a laptop and loading it up into my blog as a PDF picture. What a palaver! Ah - I see what happened. I can click on Compose or HTML above. I must have clocked on HTML. I now have to learn the HTML code to insert line breaks. Meanwhile ... Every year Grapedeal.com sends out a Christmas song parody using words relating to wine or wine bottles. See grapdedeal.com See my other posts on travel. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. See me performing poetry on YouTube. See my comic poetry books on Lulu.com Other books on Amazon. Please share my posts. Thank you.

This Poem Is An Atheist's Gift To Believers

Gift of Religion

by Angela Lansbury

This is my gift to you

My first and last white lie

To tell you I saw heaven

A happy or sad sigh

When I was born

And when I die

This is my gift to you

Which I can leave behind

To paint a better world

From my mind to your mind

A touch to soothe the deaf

A word image for the blind

This is my gift for you

For me it has to use

Take it, I do not need it

You gain, I do not lose

An ornament, an art, a lie

I’m practical, I just need truth

What can I leave to you?

A poem or a song?

What can I leave in ribbons

Like a chocolate, when I’m gone?

A lie or just the truth

Am I right or am I wrong?

You may say, she didn’t mean it

You may say what you please

You may say that heaven is golden bells

And the moon is made of cheese

Just say what makes you happy

Stop, or move on, what will ease

The strangest thing is

When we are truly dead

My words still reach to you

Today’s thoughts from my head

Time, and timeless, still preserved

What we both thought, and read and said

And so I leave to you my friend

A friendship that will never end

I would not take away from you

It’s your choice, what you think is true

You do what you want to do

And I will leave a smile for you.

I showed this to my family

It went round and round

One said that it was funny

One said it was profound

So I’ve earned immortality

An atheist underground.

-ends-

Angela Lansbury, May 2nd 2016. Copyright.

Author’s note: The last word underground is slightly pessimistic, but by happy chance it is humorously ambiguous as it could be taken to mean subversive.

I hope this poem will please believers as well as atheists and agnostics. It might even be used as a witty and consoling funeral poem.

I was inspired by a BBC article about an Italian poet.  The theme of the article was how atheists may work against or with religion, seen like myths as providing comfort and common culture.

The translations convey the meaning but miss the emphasis. In the original, as is often the case in English, as should be the case in the translation, the last word of the sentence is the one emphasised by the writer and left most remembered in every listener's mind, as well as anticipated by some readers with a knowledge of that languages words which rhyme.