1769 c/o David Smith

this means this, this means this also


i have a bumper sticker on my car of gandhi’s face.
i have another bumper sticker too which says
‘america: if you don’t love it, leave!’
but i didn’t put that one on myself.
it was there when i bought the car
and i can’t get it off. nothing
has worked so far – not soap and warm water
or hairdryers approx. 6” away
or wd-40 or razor blades.
it’s very embarrassing.
but gandhi’s face. that was me.

i also have another bumper sticker
which i’m uncertain about.
i’m debating putting it on because
i don’t know whether or not it might be
culturally insensitive or something –
i don’t know how people will interpret the thing
or what they will think of my political beliefs.
i found it at a market and i thought it looked cool,
but stuck next to that other bumper sticker
on my dirty rear windscreen
i’m not sure what kind of message i’d be sending out.
it’s just a cool bumper sticker that i like to look at.
it makes me feel calm, so maybe other drivers behind me
will feel calm too.
it’s a picture of the ottawa chief
pontiac, and even though he wasn’t
a particularly cool guy 100% of the time (e.g.
apparently he once threw
a little girl into a river
because she pooped on his clothes)
i have some respect for him too
because he was a revolutionary
of sorts, standing up to a hegemony. and
he was probably doing his best.
he was probably sometimes a bit
unsure about how to make sense
of the arbitrariness of existence
and things like that.

so what I might do is paste
a conflicting array of bumper stickers
all over that other one
(e.g. i’ve already got my eye
on this sticker which says
‘lost your cat? look under my wheels’)
and i won’t worry too much
about how it makes others feel;
i’ll just enjoy the way they look
and how they are doing their bit to erase
something negative from the world.