"I want my beard groomed. I was told this

"I want my beard groomed. I was told this was the place?" The stylist gave my bare face a quizzical look. I made a clip motion at hip level."The stylist deadpanned, "I don't trim

below the belt. Or below the shoulders for that matter." I stared at the stylist. "But I was told this was the place to go to have my beard groomed." "That's a bush, not a beard.

" replied the beard stylist glaring at the hair between my legs. I pulled up my pants uneasily. "Well, er, don't you groom hair?" I implored. "I really need this taken care of,"

He gave me the card of the nearest topiarist. When I showed her my out of hand pubic nightmare, she sucked her teeth and continued sharpening the blades of her shears thoughtfully

, randomly wondering how a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush. Of course, I had no idea what she was thinking. I only knew that if she came one step closer to me with those

hedge clippers, I'd needle her with complaints. "Hey you, get off my yews!" They were already too short. Spring was near, and the birds would need a place nest.

I gathered the yew clippings and hot-glued them back onto the yew branches. Instantly the sky darkened with birds on their way back from Canada, looking for nesting sites. They

few that survived the fall remained locked in this space-time continuum, forever doomed to silently traverse the slow, plodding rhythm and inescapable linear trajectory of time we

are each so tragically bound to. Senseless shapes flitted past them as they became subsumed by the material unity of things. They moved like the wind, unconscious.