DEVIL WITH A CANDLESTICK
Sometime while I talk I suddenly start laughing
uncontrollably because I died at twelve years of age.
I remember details, the funeral service, father was
drinking a lot, mother was crying, my older brother
had gone to the movies
and I, wretched in my coffin, was thinking the evening
family meeting
and the daring position they had found me with my
cousin.
For this, I’m saying to you, it’d be perfect if one,
during a night, was able to lift all forgetfulness off
the poor hats and survived eating gauzes in old train
stations only to make an armchair for the leftover apples
or to cry so much that the grandfather’s clock would
ring again
and tell to all our friends that all who don’t remember
eternity they’ve truly lost it.
Now, the hanged people go up riding the elevator,
no one notices them,
the old woman is fishing in her lentils for all the old
drowned men and sometime a delayed one,
at night, sees our titles written on the skin
of the killed dog.
However, Pilot, upon seeing that it was of no use and
everything was just noise, he stopped the ceremony;
they say that during the same night the parish women
gave birth to small wax semblances
and father, once merchant, after he lost all we had, stood
outside the stores and
one night I saw him stooped over the garbage “father what
are you doing there?”
“I’m looking for that old cigar”, he said.
Next morning we put him in the Asylum, with a box
of cigars that I managed to buy with some borrowed
money.
Since then I know a lot about parent killers. And I
gave up smoking.
Manolis 