If I Were A Sneeze

I'm sure by now you've seen the story about the girl who can't stop sneezing. If not, here it is. Reminds me of a long-ago poem, inspired by Patti Smith's comment that she wanted to be reincarnated as a guitar solo, and a girl's story about her devious friends.


If I Were A Sneeze



If I were a sneeze
the sneeze I'd prefer to be
would be no whomp-rush
of mini cardiac arrest
monsooned from some over-bellied blowhard
who'd use such cacophonous skull catharsis
as an excuse to wrangle some well-oiled
wrinkled rag from his right-ass pocket
and set about rearranging the interior
of his proboscis with gnarly fingers
cloaked in the handkerchief like
gargoylish finger puppets.

Nor would I be the sneeze
that issues out sequestered
and apologetic from a habited nun
ever-vigilant with her pink tissue-twined
fingers, a body embarrassed eh-choo
so delicate it never echoes off the
statued marbled walls of dank chapels;
such a celibate sneeze I would not
permit myself to be.

And don't trifle me with the quotidian
out-of-nowhere sneeze that follows shortly
with its own shadow sneeze,
or the bloodshot, Puffs-badgered nose-expulsion.
My sneeze, the me sneeze,
will not be so merely functional.
And I won't bother with the reality slap
of the after-sex sneeze—
the mind's Apollonian call of attention
to the body's Dionysian surge'n'sag.
No, the sneeze I perceive me to be
will be excited and fraught with sentience,
a sneeze animated with a God's blessing.

I will be the curfew late sneeze
of the blond fourteen-year-old girl
whose guinea pig breasts rest uneasy
'neath a white t-shirt in summer's couth moonlight,
whose cuffed denim shorts bookend tanned leg skin
with ankle-scrunched white socks
emerging from faceless cheap sneakers.

Her friends Debbie and Laurie and Jenny and Goof
use her for periodic entertainment,
taking her out to the parking lot
to tell her a you-won't-believe-it story
about Drew and Didi.
And this girl—Christine—looks and talks
and laughs dumber than she is,
but she still hasn't caught on from
slumber parties and school lunchrooms
and Huntington Beach afternoons
because she likes her friends,
so they start their inept story
and wallow in it with their
“Oh my Gods” and “like she didn't knows”
until Christine, dumb-trusting again,
sips her Snapple Kiwi-Strawberry
and all four friends shout fingernail
blackboard-like
“Got you!”

Laughing, Christine hunches immediately.
Her bitten-nail fingers cover her face.
She burps most ungirl-like
and Kiwi-Strawberry Snapple gushes
from her nose through fingers
down her shirt
splashing uneven the black pavement.
“You guys!” she stomps her right foot hard,
surfing somehow the mess
on her face and hands.
Then, laughing too hard again,
she sneezes.

Levon Helm & The RCO All-Stars-God Bless 'Em All