If you were mine,
I could do such wonderful things.
Oh, the stupid idea
of being a human being
and having to do all that sucking
to stay alive—and then he learns to talk!
Howl into the fierce grizzly innards
of interpersonal relations.
The dumb have the advantage.
Nothing but silence won’t hurt.
I wished, oh how it could have been,
stepping into a gentle night
when even leaving was a sociable act
with the band playing in the background.
I can’t tell you how happy I am
in a land of tapping fingers and dancing feet,
oh, you yokum, I’d so love to strum.

Jim Klein’s books include Blue Chevies, To Eat Is Human, Digest Divine, and Trinis Talk Like the Birds. He has published more than one hundred poems in literary magazines.