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Get off your lazy axis!

Scott Feschuk’s ode to a cold, cruel world where the street lights come on at 4 p.m.

Dear Earth,

We’re still sweet on you and everything, and you totally remain one of our favourite spheres—but over the last couple months, something has changed between us. You’re different. You’ve grown colder, less hospitable. You’ve gotten… darker.

In the hopes that you’re willing to change, we wrote this poem for you.

Love, Everyone

Like, WTF, Earth?
In the annals of what prompts despair
Ranked just above losing one’s hair
(But below wedding a Kardashian)
Is the sun going down at 4 p.m.

The roads with headlights are festooned
Though the clock says it’s still afternoon.
Our skin so pale, our moods defective
Disorders seasonally affective.

The early dusk makes tempers short
Our smiles the dark will surely thwart.
Reduced we are to glares and glowers
When our star is keeping banker’s hours.

And in our homes as many yawns
As shirtless scenes in Breaking Dawn.
PJs, slippers, vim diminished
And Jeopardy’s not even finished.

Up north the dark’s a constant pest
The sun no more than fleeting guest.
It peeks out briefly just to tease
Like a thong above a woman’s jeans.

December’s global truth behold!
Some must be hot, some others cold.
A tilt of 23 degrees
Makes Earth one big McDLT.

(Was that last reference too obscure?
I know that’s not the meal du jour.
But I thought it surely would be glib
To compare our Earth to a McRib.)

Each year it takes us by surprise
The early gloaming, late sunrise
The street lights coming on at four
And your grumpy eight-year-old just swore.

Come summer we’ll stand in ovation
To praise the ways of your rotation.
But a curse, a hex, a thousand pox
Upon autumnal equinox.

And winter solstice, even worse
The hour of dusk just plain perverse.
It’s a cruel and truly heartless ruse
To make a day short as Tom Cruise.

Across our cranky hemisphere
There comes a unifying cheer:
Hey Earth—get off your lazy axis!
Autumn’s no time to relaxis.

We hear you’re suffering climate change
Hot flashes have you feeling strange.
And word is that we are the cause
Of your planetary menopause.

Perhaps a deal we can beget
(Though technically it’s more a threat):
Spare us from the winter bummers
Or we’re all buying H2 Hummers.

It’s not as though we’re asking much
Just angle your fat arse a touch
So your top half leans toward the sun
And the next four months don’t make us glum.

For some there’ll be a cost, we’ll vouch
The briefer daylight hours will ouch
Much like a kick in the genitalia
Thanks for your sacrifice, Australia.

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