The Unvert Manifesto and Other Papers Found in the Rare Book Room of the Boston Public Library in the Handwriting of Oliver Charming.  by S.

The Unvert Manifesto

  1. An unvert is neither an invert or an outvert, a pervert or a convert, an introvert or a retrovert. An unvert chooses to have no place to turn.
  2. One should always masturbate on street corners.
  3. Unversion is the attempt to make the sexual act as rare as a rosepetal. It consists of linking the sexual with the greatest cosmic force in the universe - Nonsense, or as we prefer to call it, MERTZ.
  4. Sex should be a frightening experience like a dirty joke or an angel.
  5. Dirty jokes and angels should be frightening experiences.
  6. An unvert must not be homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, or autosexual. He must be metasexual. He must enjoy going to bed with his own tears.
  7. Mertz!
  8. All the universe is laughing at you.
  9. Poetry, painting, and cocksucking are all attempts of the unvert to make God laugh.
  10. The larger the Dada, the bigger the hole.
  11. Sidney Mertz was the only man ever arrested for drunken driving of a steam locomotive. He is now the bartender of the American Legion bar in Jackson, Wyoming.
  12. Jews and Negros are not allowed to be unverts. The Jew will never understand unversion and the Negro understands it too well.
  13. An unvert loves only other unverts. He will, however, consent to perform an act of unversion with almost anything except lovers and mountain lions.
  14. God loves God.
  15. Mertz must be applied to sex. People must learn to laugh into each other's gonads.
  16. God is an unvert.
  17. Sex without love is better than love without sex. Sex without Mertz is never better than Mertz without sex. Nonsense is an act of friendship.
  18. The larger the Dada, the bigger the hole.
  19. Nonsense, Mertz, Dada, and God all go to the same nightclubs.
  20. So does Graham Macarel.


Excerpts from Oliver Charming's Diary


1956
copyright © 1975 by the Estate of Jack Spicer
reprinted from The Collected Books of Jack Spicer with the permission of Black Sparrow Press
all materials reprinted with the kind permission of Robin Blaser