cry no more tears
stop chasing shadows
on a road rapidly aging —
I remember my grandmother cursing her dead
brother Edgar; his haunting her wasn’t unnerving,
it was inconvenient —
Uncle Edgar liked to appear to my grandmother
after the first eight minutes of Jeopardy aired,
imploring her to go with him back to the other side —
her youth unfolds
past scattered thoughts
again and again —
I can only imagine Uncle Edgar’s confusion as his
youngest sister told him to fuck off, her salutation for
her dead brother breaking through her incoherence —
my grandmother’s wild-eyed cacophony met with sighs
and nurses running for medication as she conversed with herself
in strong French influenced English —
things to touch
hide into nothing
and she feels as if
she’s in a play —
many times I listened to her story of her father’s refusal to sell
his white horse to the gypsies on Easter morning, and how that
white stallion died a day after Jesus’ resurrection —
“Nom d’un chien… un d’ours,” she liked to say as she worked
an invisible iron skillet, cooking crêpes for lumberjacks over a
long ago campfire, “I shot that bastard bear,” she insisted —
“fair thee well”
the curtain begins to fall
on what will come once more —
and the truth is I’ve been thinking of her final days at
Crestfield Manor, and how I miss the smell of her paper-thin
crêpes browning in her butter-oiled iron skillet —
but your Edgar’s tale enthralls me to no end, how cool…
a horny time traveling bipolar jumping between dimensions
forever searching for his true place —
the day past yesterday
turns out its light
and calls out her name —
I’m not one to judge the veracity of a bipolar time traveller
jumping between dimensions in search of the perfect pharmaceutical
cure for brain dysfunction and sexual maladies —
we’ll talk later when we meet-up at the Landmark, this Saturday
or maybe next Sunday? Maybe your Edgar has met my grandmother,
maybe he’ll share tales of my grandmother’s out-of-this-world crêpes…
the queen of hearts
or a maiden from the coast
with or without her
no one really knows her illusion.
© Chuck A Stetson 2013
