My return to the den of bullhorn voices
is marked by the incoming call tone
which I have pegged as a clean C sharp.
I imagine my life in a minor key
at a tempo that echoes the second hand,
cruel in its monotony.

The scheduling clerk taps her excessively
l      o      n      g         acrylic nails
in slow s
            u
              c
                c
                  e s
                      s
                        i
                         o
                           n on her laminate desktop.
They are airbrushed with beach scenes
that she considers fine art.
This tapping habit is as close to the beach
and quiet contemplation as she ever gets.

The broad women of the front office
are broadcasting their personal lives
in their own uban slanguage.
My brain has been numbed by inanity.

The nurses all wear brightly-colored scrub tops
patterned with trademarked cartoon characters.
    The patients are not comforted.
We hold our breath through the waiting room,
wading through air thick with communicable diseases
and the aura of odor that attends the homeless
and the hapless victims of poverty.

I have passed this place once in the dead of night.
It looked something like a wedding cake under floodlights.
    But you cannot trust your memory of the night here
    where morning conversation revolves around last night's violence.
    Poverty is ever-present, a crime perpetrated perpetuated by society
    consumed with preservation of structure, not life.

Too hot to rain, the air is dense today.
I feel as if I could scoop it up in armfuls,
carrying it along to suffocate my ponderings.
The soupy sky hangs nearer my reach than ever
but contains nothing to pluck from its infinity.
It is monochromatic and simple as a clean slate,
an empty canvas so deceptively full.

The white noise of the interstate is all-pervading
though dampened by particulate-thick air
that shrouds the blue-distant Knobs like a body
as if this place were dead already instead of dying.

As I flee the scene, I decline air conditioning
in favor of downed windows and speed,
leaving the work week behind me
to decay in memory.

12/10/2006

Author's Note: "Impressions from the Weeklong Challenge" (which in itself, was a distillation of the seven works written for The One Week Challenge) as re-written for Literary LEO 2007. I missed the submission deadline.

Posted on 12/10/2006
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