pine tar

Writing is a stench, it's a gnarled rain-coffin unearthed from a muddy riverbed, headlights in the fog, a hollowed cross and emblematic veranda, it's a fever headache glimmering like a coin in the sand, holes for eyes, the bark and city-scape train rails slick with oil, aspirin tablets and sawdust on your caramel-wood floor. You can cherry pick it, call it sweet wet cedar, pristine mahogany, you can trace your smooth candy-coated bookshelf in your fancy apartment, your cobalt fish tank full of angry, ravenous red-bellied piranha you never feed,  but it's nothing more than grisly blocks of black-timber, a dull ax and morose funeral fire illuminating the white-hot coals underneath your skin, the veils of spider webs suffocating the ugly eyesores in the South we call Nigger Pines.

We praise the intoxicated author, the plantation and cotton fields, the blue gums of nappy headed children drinking berried fruit-boxes, the old watermelon wagons and sacks of freed banana, the metal silo and these mangled work boots and tired hands, a writer; some feckless bishop in a cathedral of silence, the artful domed ceiling, the angels and demons all clawing and biting at each others grimy neck, the dramatic outbursts and slow-moving molasses time lapse of the last several minutes, the lemon peels and scalps of orange, the obese and shirtless ghoul haunting the skinny hallway that poses as a toilet for the disorderly, the blackened and rock-hard monstrous globes of chewing gum embedded and fetid urine stains bestowing a sad mural and outrageous mosaic with no title, an endless and timeless dirt road with no rocks, a hangman's knot tied to a fence post.

We can beautify it, ignore the rattle of a makeshift ambulance and prison full of priests and hospital workers, the dust plumes and lead-based paint, the marrow and jetting nail from the sun-warped cart, we can make the dry garden canvas grow with tarred flowers, sprouting new vibrant green stalks and peppered with willow leaves, the bitter rays of poetic sunlight and even mention the canary yellow dress on a scented laundry line, the bathing sunshine on your pretty face.