His green stole, a vine snake, hangs down. No brush. His palette is empty. He begins his work on the bedroom wall with a charcoal. His beard is grubby, and his mind, a wasp nest. A dozen tealights burns, spreading fragrance, yet the dark stink dominates there. Solemnly, he scribbles. Neither an abstract nor a mysterious beauty, his artwork is wrapped in nonsense. He mutters while scribbling (his shapeless words are stillborn). Often, he pauses and counts the beads. He doodles on (the wall is scruffy now). Only a pair of owl eyes is distinct in the drawing. The householder and his spouse are entranced by how the ‘holy’ fingers move. Divinely deceived, they muse on the prosperity that the sooty art will bring them. Belief blindness is a life imprisonment. The artist god-man zips his pregnant purse and saunters to another numb-skull, passing a jobless Master of Arts on the street. (From the latest issue of The Literary Hatchet)