The Manifesto

I am a refusenik.

I belittle what I see, for what I see resorts, incessantly, to gigantism.

This I refuse to embrace.

This I repudiate with wildly subtle gestures.

Wild and subtle.

*

I gargle--if and when I do--in private.

Is this not adequately protective a disclaimer?

*

From my seat on the bus, passing a billboard, I thought I read:

"Nothing can undo the paste."

For the remainder of the bus ride I shook my head, bemused by this hyperbole of marketing,

and delineated the numerous, numerous manners

in which I could, in fact, easily undo the effects of any paste.

 

None of these techniques was clever. They were all obvious.

I found the stupidity of that advertised claim amazingly obtuse.

 

Then, after disembarking from the bus, I saw an identical billboard.

It read: "Nothing can undo the past."

 

Glumly, I turned to look the other way.

*

Hallucinogens frighten me.

 

They remind me too much of this morning.

*

Legumes, legumes, not fruit.

 

I have no penchant for tomatoes.

 

I do not sniff the air for the presence of a fragrant peach.

 

Soybeans, snowpeas, mungs....that's the ticket.

 

Legumes, my long sought loneliness,

 

crunchy and green.

*

I never enjoyed chewing gum. Its stickiness repelled me.

"Here," someone once offered, "Chew on this," and handed me a cork.

It was clearly the stopper from some small bottle.

I tossed it into my mouth like popcorn.

Its initial, rubbery resistance quickly gave way. It broke and crumbled.

My eyes lit with glee.

"Thank you!" I exclaimed. I masticated for hours, which turned into days.

Periodically I paused and whispered, again, my gratitude.

"Thank you."

*

Beware

when you dream in the language of xylophones.

It portends the unpredictable.

It hints at the vague.

*

"Botulism?" He pretended to be unperturbed by the diagnosis.

"Why, I can whup botulism on one leg!"

I smiled a gentle smile, shushed him quiet, dismissed the false bravado.

Fishing out three coins from my trousers' depths,

I placed one on each dead eye, the third under his lifeless tongue.

 

*

I ran the streets at midnight, naked, in a hurried sweat.

Every few hundred yards I would pause, lift the conch to my lips and blow.

It was a desperate, raspy trumpet. As I blew it, my cheeks puffed out like grapefruits.

I looked like a wolf-child, bestial and infantile, howling at the moon.

 

Then running, running, to sound again the warning...

*

Listen to me, young strangers. Listen to me, and you will hear familiar echoes.

 

Close your eyes and open them again. Examine the shadows.

 

Taste your breath. Don't mistake the faint trace of anise for immortality.

[January 2006]