Timelien

Depending on the route I take, I often drive by a church's grounded marquee sign on the way home. Today's message was: PEACE STARTS WITH A SMILE. I chuckled as I thought about the statement hypothetically. By my estimation, by the time I'd stop smiling, I'd be toothless and the present timeline would end in either BD or CD.

In good faith, I'll say BD.

Dead wood Red wood

Many times I've pondered

Humanity hate love

Life death indifference

Many times I've driven

Past a pristine scene

Seen sun rise rise rise

Stop Start my heart a

Flutter a-shudder to

Think of another dark

Day to walk to stand

Rather than to quicksand

Slowly wholly holy soul solely into root.

The Club

Elin -


Let me guess:
It's the fact that he is better than anyone else that made you easy to impress.


No, wait:
It's the red that he wears on Sunday that had you hot with lust and drunk as a lush.


Maybe it's the way he hits fairway greens with ease – or maybe it's his green that made you wheeze.


When you married the man you married an icon, an idol, a label – when you bashed that club through the back of his truck and shattered the glass, you did nothing but solidify your place among the common elite: another rich woman spurned. Lesson learned?

Faith

Two spirit-filled speakers (full of bass and debasement) outside an electronics shop tremble on the pigeon-scattered sidewalk.

Out of the pair of inanimate objects permeates a soul that bellows of niggas a few fucks and a bundle of bitches.

Down the sidewalk a few stores a black man bares his soul through a staticky loudspeaker that bellows Jesus a few answers and a bundle of breaths.

The man takes his sweat-drenched white hat off from time to time like a tarnished halo.

Niggers of many colors (but mostly niggers) watch him from the bus-stop canopy or from the sidewalk.

They watch him but they do not hear him very well. The speakers are louder than the speaker.

Some pigeons fly north eight blocks and become white doves. No loudspeakers—just the soft chatter of lunch plans and the soft pitter-patter of heels.

There are no transients except for the occasional begging bum who believes in purgatory.

But the bum knows very well that a few quarters and a bundle of dollars don't make change.

At least not enough change to give him enough money to get from purgatory to Heaven.

There's a long and treacherous highway between the two that the Bible forgot to mention.

The bum can only hope that it's not a hell of a bus ride.

Romance and Cigarettes

Ass to ashen




Puff   Puff      Passhun.

The Dentist Chair

He said: You should only feel pressure. If you begin to feel pain, let me know.

The anesthesia wore off within ten minutes. After a while I began to breathe heavily, almost gasping. Clinging to the armrests. On the verge of blacking out, squirming in the chair, like a fetus lost in darkness.

He said: Are you in pain?

Exasperated and sweaty, I shrugged my shoulders, not willing to communicate any further. He decided to give me more anesthesia for the last fifteen minutes of a surgery that took over an hour to resolve.

One father. One son.

One hour. One wisdom tooth.

The pain of unresolved pressure.