What if I open the door and find
My home full of snakes?
What then?
Hundreds of serpents,
Slithering around every room.
Rude serpents at that.
What if I ask them to leave and they won’t?
What then? What, I ask you.
I suppose I can hire a gang of mongooses (mongeese?)
To come and chomp down on them.
That will solve it.
But where will I get the money?
Do mongeese even care about money?
And what if the mongoose gang likes my place
And moves in?
What if they leave the cap off the toothpaste
And dump their ashes in the butter dish,
Stuff like that?
What then? What then?
I can buy a gun and shoot them.
But there’s a three-day waiting period.
Three days of abiding with sharp-tooth rodents
Who probably don’t like me to begin with.
And when I do get the gun and shoot them all,
My place will be full of bullet holes. (I’m not a good shot.)
The neighbors will call the cops about the noise.
Maybe there’s even some kind of
Anti-weasel-shooting ordinance in the city
That extends to mongeese.
I’ll get thrown in jail.
What if the jail cell is full of crocodiles?
What then?
I suppose I can bribe a guard to get me some croc poison.
I’ll sell my gun and remaining bullets to get the money.
I guess that will solve it.
Man I feel relieved.
It never hurts to be prepared.
But what if the crocs outbid me and the guard poisons me instead?
I’ll have to think about this.
Bob Lind is a musician whose songs have been covered by more than 200 artists, including: Cher, Aretha Franklin, Eric Clapton, Marianne Faithful, Glen Campbell, Kingston Trio, Dolly Parton, and Nancy Sinatra. His lyrics have been taught in colleges and universities throughout the U.S. and Canada. He won the Florida Screenwriters Competition with his script Refuge. He won the Southern California Motion Picture Council’s Bronze Halo Award for his play The Sculptors. He also has poetry published in Iodine Poetry Journal. www.BobLind.com