The angel on your shoulder scorched its throat.
So it resorted to smoke signals and wolf whistles
And used hand gestures borrowed from minor league dugouts
Instead of the usual greeting card snippets
Delivered with the sincerity of mantra;
Which made moral quandaries more annoyingly obtuse—
Not only did you end up pocketing twenty dollars
Someone dropped at an ATM, but you ended up
Stealing second base as well.

The angel on your shoulder showed up
Jetlagged from the three valium it downed ease its fear
Of heights. It splashed water on its face
From a men’s room’s scuzzy sink,
And added makeup to conceal its pilled-out pallor
As its pupils bobbed in the mirror tilt-a-whirl style
Sha bop sha bop oop shoop sha bop bop boom—  

People saw it perched there beneath your ear
Face distorted by deposits of gaudy cosmetics;
Some pointed and yelled, “gargoyle!”  

The angel on your shoulder got its moral compass
On an app but loses its signal at least
Eight days a week, which explains its absence
At regular intervals—shortcuts
Down back roads en route to your shoulder
Vanish in the cyber ethers, leave him stranded
At Gulf Shores, Alabama on the deck
Of a seaside mom-and-pop seafood shack—
Hundreds of miles from the mark.  

The devil on your other shoulder—dressed in standard
Red devil’s garb, cartoon pointy tail
And pitchfork in tow—finds hobbies to fill
The time you devote to keeping your angel
On task. It even wrote a play:

                                                                Amateur Hour  

Scene: deck overlooking incoming surf, Gulf Shores, Alabama. A palm tree stands upstage left. Angel sits in off-white slacks and tee-shirt with wings pin on lapel center stage, bib with smiling crabs wrapped around its neck to protect it from seafood stains. Beside its varnished picnic table stands a coat rack that holds its halo like a fedora. A bucket, half-full of demolished claws, lies in the center of the table. It’s high tide, so the waves are quite obtrusive; every time one crashes ashore a person dressed as a seagull upstage right bangs two cymbals together.  

Angel (glancing at his phone): hmmm, if I post selfies with palm trees in the background, he’ll surely figure out that I’ve got enough signal to find my way home. Maybe if I caption the selfie, “Drove and drove until I ran out of road. Sure wish maps would start working again” and frowned in the selfie he would sympathize with my struggles to reach home.  

Angel walks over to the palm tree, snaps selfies with exaggerated grimaces and frowns. When he returns, he recoils ever so slightly—sitting on the bench opposite him is his owner, a sunken-eyed puppet that, rather than lips, has bandages forming an “X” where his mouth would be.  

Angel: Oh, looks like GPS really works after all! I found you!

Owner (the puppet gently mumbles while his voice comes from the wings at a much greater volume than the mumbles): Look here, angel: if this keeps up, you’re going to lose that wings pin you received when you completed the Angels 101 correspondence course. You must leave the substances alone.  

Angel (slouch straightens in an attempt to appear sober): I don’t know what you’re talking about. When I do blinkety-blink it’s because my eyes burn, not because I’m nodding off. Ow!  
Angel reaches under his arm and pulls out a large rubber tick with x’s over its eyes.

Tick: blech blech blech (Falls belly-up) 

Owner: Your blood is so narcotized that poor tick overdosed upon biting you.              

Angel: All’s I wanted was for my every direction to be legendary. The serialized highs, meant to disguise that I couldn’t fly…  

Owner: Disguise, or compensate?  

Here, the owner carefully, as though trying to avoid pain, peels the bandaged “X” from his mouth, revealing no mouth underneath. Note that this is done in casual fashion and elicits no real reaction from Angel.

Angel: But I learned you can crash even if you haven’t learned to fly. If you see double when trying to land, just aim for the middle and you’ll make it every time.  

Big Angel (addressing Angel): Um, I’ve been called in to replace you. Oh, and these are the kind of wings you should have bought with your start-up kit.  

Angel: Start-up? I earned these…oh my God!  

Big Angel attempts to climb onto the owner’s shoulder, which results in him completely flattening the puppet.

Chorus: Oh angel, you bought a pin but strap-on wings are what you needed             
Had you played it straight, your takeoff might have succeeded.    

                                                                     The End  

The angel on your shoulder arrives decked out
In bruises and fortune teller garb, but with headscarf
Pulled down over eyes like Lady Justice’s blindfold—
Bad omen for one who dodges karma
The way a squirrel jukes rush hour traffic
When the angel on your shoulder advises
“Let’s just let things play out;” no,
You’re looking for fortune cookie missives
Mainlined into your consciousness—
Look twice before crossing the line, those pills
Don’t mix, remember to take Zinc and anxiety
Meds, lather in sunscreen, when in doubt,
Lean heavily on semicolons—
Misdirection and exit strategies.  

You would will it into protector status,
But guardian angels are the domain of
Hollywood Sound stages and the tragically concussed,
More foil to the other shoulder’s fallen angel
Than fully realized hero. But what of the angel
On your shoulder? Well, you can go to Google
For a recommendation, toss a coin, just hope
For the best—a body primed for consequences
Knows karma’s inescapable as the bully on the corner
Eager to pocket your lunch money,

So you induce semi-comas in scabby blissed-out
Interiors and just watch the world go by,
Perpetual 5-second delay underwhelming
Yet intoxicating on its own steady feedback
Loop, priest’s play-by-play of the window carnation
Suffocating from thirst splattered by spittle
And other liminal Thursday afternoon miracles, just to show
You need neither angel nor agenda
To enjoy spectator sports.