Slammed & Split

Storytelling

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My Grandfather
once shook hands with John Kennedy.

True story.

See, Bill was taking the Bernsteins
to one of those places parents go
simply to torture their kids.
They involve musky, small apartments,
interchangeable anonymous relations
and a bowl of hard candy
untouched now
for two generations.

As they went about their way,
they were blocked by a motorcade.
Bill began to bluster
these boom-bap bellows
in a voice coarsened by a lifetime of deafness,
until —
as it happened —
the President was passing by
with his hand-splayed wave and smile,
none of that
elbow-elbow-wrist-wrist-
blow-a-kiss
shit.

See when Kennedy waved,
he set women's hearts to swoon.
But he saw,
with his humanitarian eye,
that Bill and the Bernsteins
were caught in a plight.

So President John Fitz Jackie Boy Kennedy —
all care and compassion,
and with nary a conference —
calls, "Halt!"

and time freezes
like the President's a hero (Hiro)

His door opens
and is carelessly closed
so it doesn't shut solidly
because a single citizen
is in distress
and nothing could leave Kennedy's heart
more of a mess.

So he approaches the window,
and senses Bill is deaf.
And Jack,
leader of the West,
knows to maintain his gaze
so Bill's lip reading is best.
And then,
like it's a presidential address,
says,
"My fellow American ..."

Yeah —
really.
And this was the only part of the story
Bill asked that we trusted him
becaue he knew it sounded too good to be true.
The rest,
of course,
was actual fact.

So Kennedy says,
"My fellow American,
what can your country
do for you?"

Bill explains the situation,
and President No. 35,
pulls an officer aside,
pushing him past any problems
by pulsing with personal magnetism.
And this policeman,
he steps out to stop traffic.
And this parade,
it parts.
And Bill and the Bernsteins are waved through
by their own personal Moses —
but only after Kennedy claps hands
with the children chilling in back,
even charming shy Alice,
who was too timid to look him in the eye
until he smiled
and told her she looked just like Jackie O
when she was a little girl.

But you graduate from the kids' table in measurable increments,
and start to realize that bullets begin to bore holes
through the cracks that exist where multiple memories collide.

See,
my mother remembers the cars,
though Mark makes clear
there were only a few
before Fred —
good ol' Final Word Freddie —
says it was some city politician,
maybe even the mayor
who waved as he rode on by
cresting in their minds before spilling out
across the rest of the route.

See,
Grandpa Bill knew
that facts were distinct from the truth
and sometimes,
you needed to add something extra
to make the tale taste better going down.
And that mayonnaise stories
are always filling,
even when they didn't sit well in your stomach.

And we know now that Grandpa gave down
this gift for stretching the sound of the truth.
And every poem or piece I produce
is another bit of proof
that you can call him a liar,
but I never stopped believing.