And To Teach Them Their Proper Places, God Put Smiles Upon Their Faces

Sitting in a lobby,

waiting to meet somebody,

somebody large and unknown, 

I suddenly started doodling

chaotic squiggles, zig-zags, lines,

simple organisms without spines,

jiggling and spreading all over the place

but really going nowhere.

I tapped my pencil three times and

eyeballs popped up in a blank space.

A small circle appeared, signifying a nose,

and now I draw a line, a mouth, curved into a smile.

I pause to peer into the black-dot eyes.

Despite their roughness, their disproportionate size,

those eyes look desperately toward the skies

and catch a blurry vision of me.  

Now he speaks: “Thank you 

for drawing my eyes, so I may behold you, my Maker.

Finally I see the One Who Wields Both Pen and Paper!”

Next he says, “I’m bored. And you drew me all wrong.

I would have preferred non-existence!”

There’s nothing I can say to him now, and anyhow,

I’m busy breathing life into the nostrils

of a million more faces, placing smiles on their lips. 

This is my attempt to communicate,
to place in them something innate,

to say that Joy is their natural state.