If There Were a Manual
During recurrent intervals of who am I and why am I here,
I drift over what may have been a path but is no longer,
wondering through a sunken meadow,
where foot trails are obsolete, obscured by the scattered remains
of watermelon husks and corn rinds,
where shadows are wrinkled
from too much exposure to the sun.
Finally fitfully, passing through somehow and somewhere, I arrive
at the local library, a species so nearly extinct
it’s confined to the zoo,
where the whisper of worn pages
induces a skin-shivering sigh
across the skeleton of shelves,
where a camera flashes in a futile attempt
to capture, in gigabytes, the scent of faded ink.
At the front desk, I ask
may I please have a manual to life,
and the librarian,
carrying on her precariously hobbled shoulders
the weighted wisdom of all immortalized poets, responds
right this way.
She slides quietly, is she still there,
slipping through the corridors of guidebooks
until I’m left wandering
when are we stopping,
which author will it be,
a conglomeration of voices reverberating off
the curved interior of my trembling skull:
Shakespeare, his arm outstretched, musing
life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
that struts and frets his hour upon the stage
and then is heard no more. It is a tale
told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
signifying nothing;
Angelou, chin titled sideways, proclaiming
life loves to be taken by the lapel and told
“I’m with you kid. Let’s go”;
Frost, with a slight smile, revealing
in three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life:
it goes on.

Still treading in the wake of the librarian
and the absence of the quintessential volume, I imagine
what the manual will look like:

a human diagram with clearly labeled body parts
feet -- made in China
lungs -- please recycle
wrists -- tear here
graying hair -- keep out of reach of children
heart -- handle with care
brain -- lost and found
ears -- for lease
a Google map from HERE to HAPPINESS
1. Head south
2. Dead End
3. Turn right onto Despair Ave.
4. One Way
5. Continue until out of gas
6. Do Not Enter
7. Make next possible U-turn
8. Stop
9. Turn left
10. Detour
11. Turn left
12. Road Work Ahead
13. Turn right
14. Winding Road
15. Cross Watershed Bridge
16. Yield to pedestrians
17. Take ramp onto freeway
18. Speed Limit ∞
19. Continue several years
20. Exit
21. Destination

a carefully measured recipe for success
• four broken bones
• seven tablespoons of tragedy
• eighteen tablespoons of hope
• a full bottle of perspective
• several ounces of a secret ingredient that your mother forgot to reveal before she passed away
• mix well
• cook at six degrees of separation
Still moving,
my cells still shifting,
my head writing a seamless flow of thoughts,
I stop walking,
and in an epiphany that seems sudden but is actually the result
of the gradual evolution of incremental understandings, I realize that
if there were a manual,
no one would read it
because maybe we aren’t supposed to,
maybe on the hands of the human diagram are scars
that say figure it out for yourself,
maybe, on the Google map, you asked for driving instructions
but really, you’re walking the whole way
so the time estimates are entirely inaccurate
and you’re able to cut through crooked meadows
that aren’t even on the map in the first place,
maybe for that one stretch of uninterrupted highway
you can catch some public transport,
asking strange questions on a bus full of strangers
because you’ve decided that discomfort
is the secret ingredient in your recipe for success,
maybe we’re all supposed to write the manual ourselves
since only so many people can have
the same number of broken
bones, since everyone can choose
with the spoon labeled attitude,
exactly how many smiles to add to the cauldron before
mixing well.