MANIFESTO 
I hated school. I hated work. I hated boredom. I had no interests.
I had a happy childhood. There was school, adolescence, growing up,
questions about the future. I was twenty-one. I had no dream. 
I dropped in and out of college. After three years I wasn’t going back. 
Students sat on lawns, drank coffee, held books, discussed ideas,
wore expensive sandals and footwear. Professors taught classes on
campus greens. Students basked in youth, in the fine times of college.
I was told I’d meet my friends for life in college. 
Everywhere people smoked, sat on wide steps of academic buildings,
enjoyed the outdoors together, like people in glossy-paged catalogues. 
I hated college atmosphere. 
I left college for the last time as impulsively as ever—free and happy—
like I had a bottomless pocket of money, fully funded,
like my lungs were fresh and I could still run a mile in under six minutes. 
Cars passed slow with the wind brushing up my hair.
I listened to the dusty dirt on the bottoms of my new leather shoes.
I felt slow like a fish underwater, like a soft cloud pulled along. 
I was content to be slow, away from the vague traps between cause
and effect. Birds made noise along the roadsides,
up high in the light-green pine needles. I smelled the sandy heat.
When I closed my eyes I believed I had a grand future;
I had no problems; the past didn’t matter. 
I was going to make my life an adventure. 
I hated being told I needed health insurance.
I was sick of car insurance;
tired of people that told me to go back to school,
earn the degree, make something of my life. 
People went to college and got what they paid for.
I hated the relationship, the equation, the vending machine dispensing crinkly-packaged candies and chips. 
I didn’t want a high-paying job. I hated jobs.
I didn’t want an obvious life. 

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