eh, not sure what i think of this one, i like the idea, but it’s not congealing the way i want it to. i’ll have to come back and look at it again
grandfather is always talking in riddles, he keeps them in his pocket, the pocket with the hole in, all his riddles are escape artists, they fall to the ground and follow him wherever he goes, like baby ducks
“remember, wherever you go, there you are”
grandfather is talking in circles again, talking about ferris wheels, talking zodiac symbols and goblin on unicycles, he says “it takes one hundred million revolutions to make one evolution, so make it a good one”
grandfather keeps his third eye in his pocket, with his chapstick and a rusty key, an old baseball ticket stub and a broken golf tee, three red rosery beads and his favorite naked lady coin, grandmother is always sewing the hole in his pocket, grandfather keeps ripping it out, “a pocket with a hole in it is like a heart without a head”
grandfather is talking crazy again, static in the attic, rubbish in the oven, magic in the madhouse, is it wisdom? is it life lesson or myth? mystery or mist? (or “vapour” as hughes writes it) nothing we can understand
“the faster the dog shits, the more tired he gets”
“poppa!” grandmother yells, “not at the dinner table!” and the kids just giggle, then he sends us to bed with a riddle and a prayer “sleep deep, children, dream-birds will bring you skipping stones and magic bones, careful not to lose them when you wake”
his face is a lexicon of puzzles, eyes glitter like razors, eyebrows thick as encyclopedias, his smile a thousand years of love, and all the lines, a map of some otherworld long gone and yet to be born, his riddles unlock forgotten doors
“look at me, i walk just fine, even though my sock is falling down”
“What the hell pappa? what do you mean?”
“if there’s a hole in your soul, don’t fill it with yourself, a hole can’t fill a hole, that’s how we collapse” grandfather is always making sense, and he gets younger by the year, i see it in his eyes, he won’t be an old man poet crying old man poems, angels only sing in riddles
“surprise surprise, sunrise in the graveyard” as he walks across the rubicon, walks upon the water, he is adopting otters and river dippers, puts them in his pocket, the one with the hole in it, they will swim together forever and fly away as riddles
posted for the word list at shay’s word garden