I Will Play Chico

a cinematic poem

I want to make a movie, a modern variant of the Marx Brothers.

My brother will play Groucho, you will play Harpo, and I will

play Chico. The movie is a classic comedy mystery chase love

story. We race around being ourselves in myriad situations—

basketball games, delicatessens, hardware stores, museums

pizza parlors, schools, post offices, gas stations, taquerias,

coffee houses, traffic jams, ice cream parlors, prisons,

art galleries, trains, psychotherapists’ offices, hotels

noodle joints, laundromats, sporting goods stores,

bistros, police stations, zoos, churches, houses,

hotels, corporate headquarters, jungles—

and everywhere we go we encounter

men who are so outraged by our

being ourselves they will stop

at nothing to try to kill us.

Now and then during the movie we take time out from being

pursued by these outraged men to perform for gleeful

audiences of women and children and a few unusual

men who are not enraged by our being ourselves;

and during these breaks in the chase, I play

the piano, you play the harp, and my

brother strums a ukulele. We read

poems, sing soulful songs, tell

funny, poignant stories, and

paint lovely pictures of a

tender new society free

of cruelty and jealousy.

In the end we are captured and jailed and charged with

the crime of being ourselves. The trial takes place in a

spooky courtroom presided over by a judge wearing

a mask and hood. We are sentenced to death and

are about to be executed when all the women

and children and a few unusual men we’ve

met along our way rise up to save us.

And in a fabulous song and dance

finale, the men who wanted to kill

us for being ourselves wake from

their trances and understand

that without us they would

have nothing to hope for.

Todd Walton