ASK LAFFERTY

by Grant Carrington



Have you ever had someone come up to you and call you by another name?
Insisting he was right?
And you knew somehow he was?
Not once
but hundreds of times
And always by the same name

Is there someone walking around with your nose?
Have they confiscated your eyes?

Stolen your lips?
Counterfeited your ears?
Hijacked your hair?
Or are you someone else?

There is a legend about a double race

who lead two lives
never knowing that they have two names.

Ask Lafferty.

He knows about them.
He'll tell you.

So in the night

I hear a whistle over the back-alley fence
and I slide down the sheets
to a rendezvous with other immortals
who rule the world
secretly
or with a five-foot basketball team
before returning to bed
remembering it all as a dream
if at all.

Driving down a country road

wondering
How did I get here?
Whose car is this?
Where am I going?
Then I find myself in a farmhouse
under a bombed-out dam
with puddles of water
footsteps leading to the mud
and a glow in the stars

Policemen

obsequious
Lawyers
sycophants
Mayors
bowing
Presidents
kowtowing
Suddenly they look up
as if seeing me for the first time
and chase me
charge me with
trespassing
vagrancy
loitering
public nuisance
and resisting arrest

I look in the mirror:

eyes that have seen the Great Wall building
hair ruffled in an African breeze
nose that has smelled Cleopatra's perfume
lips that have kissed Marie Antoinette's
ears that have heard Beethoven make mistakes
hands that have handled Pyramid stone

There is a double race

a twin people.

First published in At the Sleepy Sailor: A Tribute to R.A. Lafferty
Copyright 1978. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Duplication of this poetry without permission of the author is forbidden under copyright law. Please ask permission if you wish to use it for non-commercial purposes.
PROSECUTORS WILL BE VIOLATED.


LIGHTNING DIVIDER line from ftp1.rad.kumc.edu/icons/lines/patterns/patter05.htm
Photo of R.A. LAFFERTY by Guy Lillian III

Return to Poetry Table of Contents