Always winter but never Christmas

In a land where it was always winter but never Christmas.

Where old men told jokes without a punchline.

Wives stuck in a perpetual preparation for going out,
trying on an endless procession of dresses.

Families gathered round a table,
spoke a never-ending grace.

The food set before them but never eaten.

A town which was marked by traffic lights
which never went green, but flashed alternately between red and amber.

Couples locked into a first date in which they could never steal a moment alone.

A place of rain but no rainbow,
truth without kindness,
study but no learning,
travel without arrival,
caught in a pathetic process
of always beginning and never moving.

Addicted to anticipation,
drunk on novelty,
somehow reward is banished
into a realm of fantasy,
& only possibility is entertained,
but no specific guests are invited,
much less come to eat.

The religion of promise without delivery
has erected temples all through this land,
and worshippers are locked into
pitiful prayers of supplication,
with no intention of doing what it takes
to get there.

Fear has struck a fateful blow to the land
and its inhabitants live in a circular prison, which 
always believing in the next day
but never making it different to the one before.

The eternal now grips life and locks the population in a hamster wheel of delusion.