merry christmas to my extended family, scattered across the city, without collared button down shirts, without slacks, without fine stockings, without a home to call their own. merry christmas to the fools and the war mongers, the drunks and the diseased, the addicts and the lost. merry christmas to the childless couples and the children without love, to the stray dogs sniffing through dumpsters, to the whores huddled together over a bottle of wine. merry christmas to the abused whose bones never seem to mend right and the thieves who can never seem to have enough. merry christmas to all the wretched, all those without hope, to those that are mired in despair, to those that remain sleepless, to all of us that have the faintest memory of dreaming and what any of it means.