In my most recent past life,

I was almost exactly the same I am now
(same job
same body shape and fear of spiders

same wrinkled cotton wardrobe)
except that
my hair was curly

my name was Margery
and my beard was longer.
Oh, and I had tentacles where my ears are now.

Personal-sized octopus arms,
about the thickness of a Marks-a-Lot brand magic marker
and long enough to hold

in front of my face
a cob of buttered corn,
which I would eat using the same chewing motions that I do now.

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​In the life before that,
prior to the great gene wars of the 2050s,
I was shorter, and chubbier,

hairier in all the wrong places.
And I sold pet insurance
to the nervous widows of Omaha.

There must be some record
of the life that proceeded that
but the ether is murky.

I was a sort of famous vaudeville act
a few lives prior to that.
On stage, animal noises

would resonate through
my enormous, hairy proboscis.
In make-up, I had the head of a donkey.

My showbiz-name was J. Donkey Frell.
A big nose and a fey artistic tendency
described my person through

an extended series of lives
during a dozen generations
preceding this, always one​

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of many similar, short, hairy men, weak
of will and chin falling always to
the sad symphonies of war

or at least
the singing telegram of venereal disease.
Little known fact: Chlamydia…got its name

from a character in an unpopular
satiric opera I wrote in Vienna in the 1800s.
Mostly, though, the spirits describe me

as just a surfer of the lower
to middle layers of society
in a succession of Balkan territories.

Notably, once, in the 17th century,
I was, due to a clerical error,
the Pope for three weeks.

Remarkable—my eyeglasses
prescription has been
almost the same in every life.

I don’t want to brag
but the gypsy told me
that a few thousand years ago,

I was a red show pony
named Fernutis—
rumored to be quite handsome.

The gypsy rules our lives.
She twists the fabric of time
and reality into dental floss.

Do not forget to tip the gypsy.

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