regularly scheduled maintenance.

sunrise and moonset look a lot alike
when the fullness is in full effect.
it's only when the yellow one is high enough
that the blue one looks paler.
otherwise,
it's really flippin' hard to tell what time it is
by looking out of a window in the wee small hours
of another white mountain weekend's wednesday.
but,
eventually the blue gives way to gold,
which then spreads into the bright bright
full-spectrum daytime illumination.
that's kind of how it goes though, y'know?
long nights and hard styles never just abruptly end,
they just evolve into something else.
it's just a series of barely perceptible transitions.
before you realize it everything is different,
and you barely even register the change.
because on the ones,
when you're awake for long enough,
it seems like everything is happening
and nothing is happening.
it's basically being a sleepwalking daydreamer
moonlighting as a lucid fugue statesman.
that's the epitome of temporal indiscernibility.
it's mercurial.
y'heard?
just like, specifically and figuratively,
the flippin' temperature in the woodsly goodness.
we're mood-swinging from well below freezing
back up to springlike snowmelt warmth,
and back again.
the nightlight makes it seem warmer,
the sunlight makes it feel colder.
and in between,
the moonbeams are etching a blueprint in blue light-
a pattern of process and progress,
encoded in the pictographic glyphs of shadows
cast in the dark,
and the day erases each message
and makes room for the next one.
huh.
that's some sh!t.
*are you still reading? i hope so.
if you made it through all that,
i've got some self-deprecating dessert for you below.
***********
sometimes,
ugliness can run away from you.
huh?
no.
like a runaway train, or a gambling problem.
you've got to stay on top of it.
respect the protocols.
take the appropriate and necessary maneuvers.
for real.
if you're prone to scruffed-up skazziness,
and pooped-up squacking,
and generally displeasurable appearances,
you've got to stay ON that sh!t.
i've got an early a.m. appointment, my ninjas.
yuuuuuuuuup.
a removal/improvement activation,
for my actual face.
relax.
it's just a beard trim.
but it's very important, kids.
handsome enhancement sways by a point or two variable,
up or down, based on my jawline's topiary manicure.
just sayin',
i'm about a 5 on the good-lookin' scale most days,
and that's pretty much half bad, by my math.
but my beard can really make a huge difference with that.
in terms of transferrable direct actions,
it's the one thing short of a head transplant
that gives me half a shot at visual self-improvement.
just sayin', neighbors-
no haircut in the world is gonna fix my gorilla-shaped
silverbacked-and-sided, bumpy, grumpy, lumpy head;
and no toupee could convincingly improve
the ever-widening and cruelly complex crop circles
communicating with those who reside above me...
that's right,
tall folks get rebuked in code by my hieroglyphic baldness.
...but anyway,
the beard at least, has some semi-magic properties.
too much beard,
like after a long cold winter, maybe,
and suddenly i'm a hasidic caveman from the fertile crescent.
that's not good.
but then again,
not enough beard?
oh MAN!
i'm a weaselly, simp-chinned peanut head,
until the stubble can fill in for my jawbone's underassertiveness.
i mean,
who has an underbite like a brachycephalic,
and yet still reps an underdefined and de-delineated
amphiban septum-to-sternum segue from head to torso?
me, obviously.
awwwwwwwwwwwwwww,
c'mon.
---
the thing is, friends,
well away from those two extremes,
there is a finely-honed middle ground.
it spans the distance from white hip-hop enthusiast
all the way to idealistic professor,
with danger zones dipping down as low as 'guido D*bag',
and as high as 'patronizing rabbi'.
all i know for certain is,
when it's working,
the scales tip in my favor-
the beard can conjure up a 6,
or even a 6.5 with the right hat,
but,
when i've angered the gods of personal grooming
i can straight up F* right off as far away as a 3.
mercurial, y'all.
am i gonna let my face ruin everything?
i think it's got it's own agenda, independent of my own,
and that may be a foregone outcome,
just not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin.
stop it.
preventative maintenance, duders.
real life takes work;
never quiet, never soft.....