What will you be doing this Christmas?
Sitting at home with the kids?
Not in some dark smelly alley
Hunting ‘neath grey dustbin lids?

Will you be having a turkey?
Roast taters all done in a tin?
I bet you don’t fancy cold bacon
Pulled out of somebody’s bin?

That sixty-inch new plasma telly
With 3D and virtual surround
Looks great and sounds really special
But not to a man on the ground

The box your telly arrived in
Is down in the alleyway too
The polystyrene and cardboard
Keeps somebody warm thanks to you

As you drink your whisky and soda
Choose a mince-pie or a trifle
The man asleep in your T.V. box
Has nightmares that he cannot stifle

Over and over he re-lives the time
His comrades and he were at war
Fighting in conflicts, so long ago,
That he’ll see in his dreams evermore

When he wakes up in the morning
The images still somehow remain
He’s tried everything to forget them
But he can’t, they just come back again

Both cold and hunger are certain
To someday take him away
But you can be proud that your T.V. box
Has kept him alive one more day