Instead of Reading This Blog

....you could be feeding a family of five with just pennies in hay ....you could be writing the next Great American Regulations on Interrogation Methods ....you could be dutifully calling a loved one you really don't care for much, but the guilt's too much sometimes, you want to be able to look at yourself in the mirror, you really do ....you could be developing a strange growth, one that's not almost out of diapers and into big boy pants ....you could be teaching a butterfly to read, a school to sleep, a hippo to fly, a balloon to sink ....you could be learning a useful trade, like "mortician," "air-conditioner repair person," or "genius" ....you could be sleeping, but with one eye open, because you never know, the other eye might be faking and have some evil ideas ....you could be home by now but you obsessively must count the number of steps from the Metro train to the gate, and they must always be even, always, always, always ....you could be writing a poem, as I hear there is a big shortage of poems, known as black and white gold, Amherst tea, Whitman's diamond mine, Eliot's secret invention, Ashbery moolah