Jody does hair – she dyes it, styles it, washes it, makes it up.
She will chop it, slice it, dice it, down low it, mix bleach in a cup.
Jody has always wanted to do hair, and now she does it daily.
Her children know to wait for her, she is there with their dog Bailey.
Bailey lies in the back, snoring away as he dreams of chasing sheep.
Some of the customers do not know he is there, making barely a peep.
Ahead of a just fixed funeral
He'd started counting its numeral:
Negotiator of the fairest price.
For twenty five bags of Thailand Rice...
Negotiator meets, too, Mortician
And relates to him as Beautician:
One is as good as partaker,
Who goes around as undertaker
"Well, he's for badly frowning corpses
Owners pay thousands for cleaned lapses".
Man wants his wife's corpse to start smiling;
If this can't be time away whiling.
If possible her lips archly grinning:
Guests sometimes cough for face in linen...
The discussions he will not linger,
Mortician to at price point finger...
All corpses have interest to protect,
Job of the living to them detect.
My valued time for musicians:
On-stage a class of magicians,
Though their tunes not for theologian’s
Who brand musicians logicians…
It’s a reaching-out to people
For stirring their dreams or ripple,
Musicians for the route to love,
Their tunes proofs of its being a dove
“While living, bleeding and kicking
A lip you conquered be licking,
Even as time keeps a-ticking.
And unsolved mad problems sticking."
Man’s sought scarce time for musicians.
They’d envision bright conditions,
In songs hallowing beauticians;
Or them rhythmic renditions:
Lots of creative time finding,
For actions to a pair binding;
Now, no axe for spouses’ grinding
Not with great tunes for a minding
The beautician frowns in the mirror.
She stops combing.
I think she has found a tick.
I get them frequently. I live in the country.
Why would you have paint in your hair? She asks me.
I am a painter, I tell her.
She gives me a look I have not seen since my mother died.
I have to laugh.
Brendon earns his bread and butter
as an artist at Anna's -
Anna's Beauty Salon.
He places the smock across my shoulders
as if it were a feathered gown;
I feel resplendent already.
Removing the pencil from my messy bun,
he unfastens my hair with
hungry hands.
His fingers dance with intrigue like the
balloons bobbing on the mirror..
He is the cat and I am his cream.