This Isn't Another Poem about Writing Poetry

If it were another poem about writing poetry,
and I'd slipped it onto your dining room table,
right about now you would be realizing
how you had been tricked.
Right at this moment
you would find yourself dashing through the kitchen
and out the side door, comprehending that the screaming
you are hearing was coming from your own throat.
Seeing a windfallen stick next to your carport,
you would snatch it up, snap it over your knee
and jam the jagged point directly into your right eye.

With the stick still lodged in your skull,
you would return to your breakfast, now able to finish
in peace. Shaving would be a little complicated,
but luckily you had already pulled your T-shirt
over your previously stickless eye.

Waiting at the train station, people would give you
an occasional glance. You would nod, the stick
exagerating your motion, and keep reading the free
newspaper with your one good eye.

Some dude might sally over and say knowingly,
"Catch a little Dr. Phil this morning?"
You'd say, "No, someone slipped me
a poem about writing poetry."
"Dude" the dude would respond,
"You can't trust anyone these days.
Someone slipped my brother-in-law one of those -
he ran right through the sliding glass door,
jumped off the deck into the hydrangeas
and hasn't been seen since."
He would clap his hands together as if landing
in hydrangeas would have made a smacking sound.
Or perhaps it was to emphasize the speed
with which his lost brother-in-law
had made his escape.
You would be indifferent to this physical metaphor,
but grateful to have survived your own scrape.

"Sorry for your loss," you'd feel compelled to say
as the cars rattled to a stop.

You'd find yourself turning to the right a bit more
as you entered to scan for wayward pieces of paper
with courier font in choppy lines
before you sat down again.