Devona Wyant, “Doing the Time Warp with My Quantum Mechanic”

Devona Wyant
DOING THE TIME WARP WITH MY QUANTUM MECHANIC

Someone has been playing cat’s cradle
with the cosmic strings
because various life characters
are jumping ship to do the time warp.
I saw myself on the street yesterday
and wished I looked that good.
When I glimpsed myself in the grocery store,
looking like death warmed over,
I knew it was time to call for a reunion of sorts.
All twenty-six of me met at the Taste Full Beans
to discuss the state of things in a congenial atmosphere.
As we sorted out our histories, understanding came.
The me that looked so good, never married my first husband,
never spent a month in a bus station living on catsup soup.
Instead, I took that job in Paris and married a professor there.
The me with one foot in the grave, not only married our first husband,
but married our first sweetheart as well.
Not to mention a third who was a stranger to this me.
The professional me spent years getting a degree
and never married at all.
Some of me had children. Most did not.
On one plane of existence, I even had religion.
Some still had our mother. A few had a father who wasn’t a disaster.
I lived everywhere, every when. Often happily, sometimes not.
Each me saw how each decision,
each choice, leads to the next choice,
a road difficult to leave with few exits,
where only the bravest will leave the road entirely
to drive across the land itself.
I liked some of myselves.
I wanted to scream at others.
But just as we started to make sense
of what was, what is, and what could still be,
our various friends and lovers,
siblings and spouses, and family arrived.
Too many for the coffee shop to hold.
When each started to compare their lives, it was chaos.
But that’s another theory.

Author’s Comment: Some poems just come naturally. Take one part interest in Chaos Theory, one part interest in String Theory, add a healthy
helping of Rocky Horror Picture Show and you have this poem.

Bio: Devona Wyant is the senior founder of Poetry Lincolnton and has been published in five anthologies, various on line journals and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. She has also been part of “100 Thousand Poets for Change”.