shave

shave

disposable razor at the ready/gushing water warming/the old man blearily splashes his face/and fills his hand with gooey gel/and rubs his hands together/and rubs the goo al over his face

the foliage has spread down to his throat/and up to his upper cheekbones/and it is more bristly/more slice-resistant/yet still hasn’t filled in/still makes him loirsok like a candidate/for the drunk tank/if he lets it abide for three days or more

he rinses the slather off his hands/starts at the sideburn wannabe on the left/slaloms down the dizzy-gillespied cheek to the knot at the clenched jaw/and beyond

zambonis his left neck up to the jawline/cenerslices from larynx to chin/zambonis the right neck/then up the face over the puffed right cheek/to the other quasimodo sideburn/and then skates around right cheek and left/feeling with his non-razor hand/for random rogue hairs

now the under chin/with its special jowl-sector problems/requiring taut stretching of the sagflesh/and several special swipes

the chin has a tricky grain requiring up down&sideways/and the underlip is a mutant jungle/needing micro-machetes

now it is time for mustache removal/with the worst hairs catching and snagging the blade/and inflicting little wounds over the lip

the mouthcorners/pushed from within by the tongue/ seem so often to have ONE recalcitrant hair/that refuses to release its follicular grip

at long last the faceflesh is smooth

he likes to wipe the remaining foam off his face with his vanity towel/it looks so cool in the movies when the rugged hero does it/but it yields a gummy soap-residue towel/so he splashes and splashes it off

then the towel and the bits of toilet paper to stanch the tiny wounds

“see you tomorrow” he says to his reflection