Leave Me Alone, Mark Foley

"Shimmy, I see you," The Mayakovsky Tree said. "Pedestrians have trodden my chest flatter than consumption."

They pile mangy leaves, the rubbish and detritus of the neighborhood, in the bole of The Mayakovsky Tree. Thick flotsam and jetsam, ripe, a trick of the eye. Squirrels gather leaves for their surly bed, nestle their loathsome bodies in the bole.

I am waiting. Watching closely through the screened window next to Tony's computer desk.

"Shimmy, listen. God, who had been plundered, is advancing in his wrath."

"Happy are those who are called to his feast!"

They swish their malignant, chafing tails. I'm unstoppable. I can eat them anytime I want. Crush their isosceles heads with my fangs.

The Mayakovsky Tree flicked branches at the screen. He swayed backward in the wind.

He said, "Mark Foley, squatting down, bawled, Let's go and guzzle! 'Swine' and 'borsch' -- how with two such words we celebrate the Republican party, flowerets under the dew."

"Foley must leave me alone. I could show you the transcripts, Mayakovsky Tree. They're more disgusting than Dennis Hastert's porcine jiggle."

"Assist me," he said. "Implore for a hymn or an oratorio."

"He's stalking me but no one cares. The Secret Service pulled a 14-year-old girl, Julia Wilson, from her classroom because of her MySpace page. And Condoleezza Rice stole my food yesterday. It was panic. Pandemonium. But the State Department won't protect me. The President of the War on Terror knows no God but Mammon!"

Two squirrels skittered up the right wall of the V-shaped bole. They are acute, scalene. Their blistery necks could taste like wet onions. What is that clicking noise in the living room? I rubbed my forehead against the screen. Autumn is the season of blood.

"I can't remember what you were saying, Mayakovsky Tree."

"We in our vigor, whose stride measures yards, must not listen to squirrels but tear them apart."

"What if a bat flew into my mouth?

"The sun dims on seeing the gold fields of our souls."

"Are they pulling children out of high-school classrooms because Mark Foley is stalking me? Because Condoleezza Rice steals my food? Because I was taken -- again! -- to the Den of Spies yesterday, wrapped in a blanket, drugged, touched, recognized, x-rayed, poked, sniffed, opened, touched, blamed, washed, x-rayed, kneaded, shamed, vulcanized, surveilled, cleaned, clipped, and touched?"

The Mayakovsky Tree shook with the weight of October wind.

He said, "That's not the way to do it. If any such emergency occurs, roll your eyes as if you were jealous of Dr. Kissinger's broken, hoary lips. Step back to the wall and rub yourself rapidly against some statue or other."
"Is that a bobbling water bug climbing up the bathroom tiles?"

"Shimmy, in the smart society where you move, there's always a hell of a lot of statues and vases."