| God's
Haircut
So
God decides it might be nice
to drop by Tony's barber shop
the red and white striped pole outside
spinning forever nowhere, like infinity.
And the smell of Lucky Tiger--
one of his more successful creations,
like the inorganic and The Death Joke.
and Tony's always good for a few laughs
on the forbidden topics:
politics, religion, and kinky you-know-what--
although He's heard it all
so many times, it ofen seems
like talking to Oneself.
But
certainly (most absolutely!) His presence
just outside the shop
had nothing to do with Mrs. God's
yakkety-yakking lately
that He's getting shaggy around the ears,
like some old schlepper
with stains on his ties
and unzipped flies.
When She gets such notions--
every eon or so--
all arguments on His (and Her!)
immutability are useless
as trying to get Her to admit
She wears an eight-and-a-half sized shoe--
always did and always will!
Anyway,
He tells Himself, it's only
for the comfy ambience He's there
to doze away to Tony's babble,
the snip-snip of scissors
like the cheep of silver insects
in a summer meadow,
where intermittent electric clippers
make the furry buzz of bees.
He's already so relaxed on entering
He pretends He doesn't see
Tony getting the old Playboys out of sight.
He
gets into the elevated,
footstooled barber chair without a word
as Tony flap-snaps the white sheet
he'll wrap around the august patron
like a bishop's smock.
Today, God wears a short spade beard--
Mrs. likes it, says it makes Him
look Edwardian and younger.
But it's because of Tony that He's changed
the trailing, patriarchal one
that Michelangelo decreed on Sistine's ceiling.
The barber's fingers always itch
to "trim it up a bit?"
Tony
starts by pumping up the chair somehow,
then releases something so that God sinks
down as if on a deflating inner tube.
"So," says Tony, "a little off the top,
trim it around the sides?"
God grunts while Tony picks his
instruments as carefully as a surgeon
preparing for an operation on God's brain.
"You can take some off the front,"
God allows, "but don't square it off--
I don't want to look
like one of The Three Stooges."
It's Tony's turn to grunt.
Today,
as Tony clips away, he complains
about his oldest son.
(He should have My problems, God drifts off,
not one a professional, most still lounging
around one of My many mansions.)
Then afterward, the final touches,
like a sacrament: witch-hazeling
and powdering the close-shaved back of the neck;
the Lucky Tiger, like the Balm of Gilead,
worked all around the scalp;
then everything combed into place
till finally, Tony whirls Him in the chair
to face the mirror, holds another
up behind His head--it's their private joke,
as if God couldn't see the back of His own head.
"Well?" Tony asks. And God says, "Perfect,"
although He knows the Missus will complain
that it's uneven in the back,
that He never gets enough off in the front.
--Ron
Offen
Copyright
© 1995 by Ron Offen.
|
From:
God's Haircut and
Other Remembered Dreams
|
