Carlos Del Monte’s Verse Chorus Verse

He was a quiet man

Greasy hair parted off kilter, pale flakey skin

Mustard yellow suit jacket, brown polyester pants

My father stood and talked to him before the service

I sat and stared from the church pew, oddly fascinated

Back then my parents had

Quite the cast of characters for friends

My father gave him a dollar

The man reached into a box and pulled out

The new issue of his recently completed magazine

Created and self published by the man

Goldenrod paper cover folded in half

Staple on the spine holding it together

Probably thirty typed and xeroxed pages

My father thanked him, thumbed through the pages

Too young to stay interested for long in the words I was reading

My father said the man was very intelligent and

Most of his writing was hard to understand

Religious ruminations, theological theories

Also numbers and equations with

Some conspiracy thrown in for good measure

I thought each issue of the little pamphlet was amazing

Yesterday puzzling over my own manuscript

Papers strewn everywhere working on the correct order

Scratching my unshaven chin

Wearing my coffee and mustard stained white tee shirt,

Army green sweat pants two days late for the laundry

Suddenly I remember the man and burst out,

“My god! This is what it feels like to be him!”

I have become someone's weird uncle