If only I was on my second don't-live-like-a-pig-week
If only the sun wasn't always rising behind the next hill
If only I was the flavor of tarragon
If only I was phosporescence and a night phenomena at sea
If only Old Drainpipe Rensaleer as we usted to call him hadn't hit bottom in Detroit the time he made a fancy dive and and got absentminded and forgot to turn and all his shortribs got stove in he got sucked down the drainpipe because the grate wasn't on
If only I didn't have to get up and let our dog out now
If only the glorious day in April because it has no beginning or end that all Flatbush had awaited impatiently between creation and construction has come
If only i was James Joyce and had written Finnegans Wake only then I'd be gone
If only I too had the force to batter a reader about like a shuttlecock and then strike him or her out with an indelible phrase to make him or her forever after a changed him or her
If only someone would hug me right now
If only I was a sickle moon only then I'd never be full
If only I could explode like symbolism
If only those degraded bastards hadn't monkeyed around with the Oreo Sandwich pattern
If only I didn't have to get up and let our dog in again now
If only I didn't think i was the infant Jesus otherwise what was iI doin ghanging upside down in a blue light in the barn all night....
-part of "If Only" by Ruth Krauss
