balding angrily

I’m sitting here looking at the traffic on Jefferson into downtown. The lights are white, yellow, red, neon, fluorescent, halogen, and LED. They’re beautiful, unnatural, and man-made. The soccer ball flashes and turns with its red nipple blinking. Radio towers flash and blink. Different densities of air molecules make car headlights flicker, disappear, and reappear. Flash. Blink. The nations on the soccer ball dissolve, mix-up, shatter, and splinter. The ball shows more shattering atoms and molecules, but still there’s the red nipple. The WFAA tower beyond has another red nipple. It fades in and out, not from air densities, but of its own volition. It pulses like a contented heart. My reflection is pale, transparent without detail, but shows an ear and a serious look.

This is what happens when you follow the advice of a friend when you can’t think of anything to write. “Just write anything,” she said. “It worked in that movie where Sean Connery played J.D. Salinger,” I thought, so I tried it. I’m not sure I approve of the results. It looks affected, like the poetry of a 14-year-old in her journal.