by Richard Stevenson
He was an old man in thirties clothes,
not a dashing Johnny Cash wannabe —
more David Bowie in Hunger mode.
Falling-off-the-bone flesh and bones.
Liver spots. Wattles that’d put
yer prize turkeys’ in the shade.
He layeth a boney finger on me. He did!
Told me he could really read palms
and would like to read my friend’s and mine.
Told my friend to sit a couple of tables away
To give us each the privacy his audit would demand.
I’m feelin’ sorry for the guy by this time.
He’s a very old man — in his eighties easy.
I notice he has cataracts; accede to his demands.
Turn up my palms and take a seat anyway.
He pillages my childhood, puts the scare
in me — and a hook to reel me in.
Forces me to listen while he berates me.
Gotta stop tellin’ folks I’ve been abducted,
whisked away in a tin can by melon heads,
and that I’m gonna wither to cancer soon.
All the time I’m thinking creepy old crawler…
I’m dropping a wad of cash for his uncanny rap.
Hopin’ it’s so much pap, but enthralled anyway.
Later, my friend berates me. Has a good laugh
at my frequent Grey visitation confession.
It’s the end of our friendship. I leave town.
I’m devastated. My friend got five minutes —
the Honda Civic short saucer special —
eight years later, gets cancer, buys the farm.
Now I’ve got it. Third stage. Past
The hair fallin’ out chemo stage. Feelin’ groovy.
Scratchin’ my balding pate, thinkin’ of that old man.
He was right about everything.
You want to hear that, don’t you?
That I didn’t amount to a blown dandelion seed?
That I got swindled in this life.
But I can’t let the government man
or whoever he was bamboozle me.
Then I suddenly get it —
the old man’s message that I could be
time’s whore or stand up to my death.
Be the someone who didn’t amount to a thing,
The someone who would be the me
I chose to create. A ton of freight for frail shoulders.
I got a mule and Katy died. Yippeee,
I got to be a hippy before I became a yuppie,
got married, had three kids, got divorced, and died.
Yippee! I hopped a saucer before I bought ‘er.
Got the Hail Bop comet to Planet Med.
I’m friggin’ dead. The end. Rewind, dude: I’m talkin’ to you.
Richard Stevenson retired from a thirty-year gig teaching English and Creative Writing courses for Lethbridge College in 2015. He is the author of thirty-two books and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia (1984) and an honours Bachelor’s degree in English (1974) and Diploma in Secondary Education (English, 1977) from the University of Victoria.
