this is what I’m going to do one day: write variations on the theme of the exclamation point. smoke cigarettes out of pen cap holders. drive cars without windshields. have teeth unnecessarily removed. become bulimic. become sedentary. move only to gorge and vomit. buy more books on the internet than I could ever possibly read. never open one. dig holes in my backyard, not so I can fill them, but so I can wait for small animals and maybe children to fall in and make them graves and not just holes. become addicted for the rehab. learn the art of taxidermy just so I can write blank verse on real vellum. learn to draw landscapes and then never move next to the water. go to bait and tackle stores just to cut the fishing lines. arbitrarily. tear tags off dresses. tear shrink wrap from CD labels at newbury comics. break into barnes & noble’s at midnight to rip every cover off every book. have a bonfire. throw in all my clothes that aren’t white, or of one type of fabric, or stained with bleach or lye or something with a biblical name. read the gospel of mark. write the gospel of mark. write my congressman about the book of mark and mark about my congressman. become a telephone operator just to quit in protest. ferry shopping carts in parking lots. find out how to make isolation more fun than bearable. be somebody’s lab partner. stick my hand in a meat grinder, trying to fish out my lab partner’s engagement ring, later to catch his fiancee sleeping around. sleep around. sell insurance to people who can’t afford it. insure people who can’t afford insurance against insurance agents who prey on their insecurities. leave the agency in a furor of excitement over an indecent proposal regarding my boss’s girlfriend. receive proposals, indecently, from my boss’s girlfriend. drink wine from shoes. make shoes from wine labels. wear them down to narrow rags. make impossible demands, such as: electricity must be rediscovered. youth can’t be outdated anymore. wait, wait, wait, knowing that each hour I wait I have even less to use to threaten the world, should it fail to deliver on any of these demands.
grow old feeling more American each day.
