“Christmas a joke!” proclaimed Henry M. Tichenor, who took the “Red Pill” in 1914.


1845-1945, Poetry / Friday, December 24th, 2021
The following two poems by socialist Henry M. Tichenor were collected in sole poetry collection Rhymes of the Revolution (St. Louis, National Rip-Saw Publishing, 1914). Tichenor is the author of Sorceries and Scandals of Satan, (Baltimore, Underworld Amusements,2010) (avail: UA, Amazon) and his debate with egoist John Basil Barnhill (aka John Erwin McCall, aka “Volcano”) was published as Barnhill-Tichenor debate on Socialism (St. Louis, National Rip-Saw Publishing, 1914).

The Red Pill Cure For Nightmares

I had a dream the other night that filled my soul with glory—t’was such a dream that I can’t help but tell you folks the story.

I dreampt I lived in Crazy Land, where workin’ folks are donkeys, who dig and sweat to beat the band to feed a lot of monkeys.

They starve and freeze and have no fun, their youngsters have no pleasure, while all the monks live lives of ease, like gentle-monks of leisure.

And I was feelin’ awful glum—I dreampt I was a donkey, and life in Crazy Land is bum, unless you are a monkey—and I was wonderin’ what to do, and almost felt like croakin’, when a troop of lions came along a laughin’ and a jokin’.

“Come on!” they yelled, “come join the bunch, we’re goin’ to live in clover—we, too, were donkeys all our lives, but now the spell is over—we’ve found a little, round RED pill that beats your thoughts of dyin’ and every ass that takes this pill becomes a FREE RED LION!”

I swallowed one of those RED pills—I was no more a donkey-I was a LION who refused to work for any monkey!


Christmas

He was taken out and crucified by rulers and their priests;
His followers were burned at stakes and fed to hungry beasts;
His call to Peace and Brotherhood—all that the sad world needs
Was hidden from the workers in a pile of pagan creeds;
And the race plunged on in darkness, just as it had before,
And for nineteen hundred years has damned the earth with Hate and War.
A world of “Peace” and “Brotherhood,” where masters own the bread?
Christmas? Hell! What joke is this, in a land where Christ is dead?

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