So the world doesn't stop when you get cancer, sadly.
So there were a bunch of interesting revelations
that happened recently in my family.
My sister is a genealogist, and she found out
that my grandfather who was a suicide, he
died many years before I was born, was a criminal.
We always been told that he was a stockbroker.
But, in fact, he was not brokering stocks,
he was spending most of his adult life,
short though it was, in the Indiana State Penitentiary.
So when I found that out I had to write a poem about that.
So Requiem With Eye Roll.
It's about my grandfather.
No minister mild of manner, moon faced over his tab color
my grandfather.
Rather, a gambler.
An embezzler.
A loan shark.
A con man.
A womanizer, booze breathed and both feet
on the gas of whatever jalopy got left unlocked.
He even borrowed the gun he shot himself with, the smart ass.
Of course, he conked it in a cornfield
in Winchester, Indiana so that joke was on him.
Oblivion.
How's that for a punch line.