BACK
FUNCTIONING ON IMPATIENCE (A PARABLE IN THREE
PARTS)
gregory heaney
[1] 10:47 - Mercy
He had been up for 58 hours, a lone craftsmen, forging his own legend
while chasing Dexatrim with Old Crow, when he looked me straight in
the eye and said “a man always drinks from a bottle when it’s offered to
him,” breath acrid with the scent of burnt pills, like the way aspirin
tastes if you leave it in your mouth too long.
[2] 2:58 - Behold
He had been up for 62 hours, pacing pacing pacing, fueled by nervous
energy, back and forth and back and forth, 10,000 volts of impatience
climbing a Jacobs Ladder, and as his arc was about to disappear in a
puff of ozone, he queried the onlookers, a makeshift congregation, and
asked them frankly and without malice, “Are you prepared for the
second coming of the X-Man?”
[3] 8:15 - Leaven
He had been up for 67 hours when, at long last, he stumbled backwards
into a chair, bleary eyed and blasted, and mumbled a prayer to Saint
Barbara before passing out, the congregation taking the time to name
him Saint Stranger of Red Bull, their sculptors immortalizing him in
modeling clay, a simulacrum of the man himself, sleeping in a chair,
with a boner poking out from the leg of his running shorts for all of
creation to see.
(c) 2008 by Gregory Heaney