Share   Print  Save   Become a Fan

This is semi-poetry. Poetry is dead, according to Newsweek.

Glad to Live Here
But it’s better than Iraq, for now

Now take the postal system.
It’s well oiled
if you ask me

pay 37 cents to send a letter
and every day get 15 pieces
of junk mail
Subsidized by YOU,
each costing 6 cents to mail

How clever of them !
to device a system
where I pay for the junk mail
I don't want. I asked the post office
once not to send me junk mail.

They were very indignant ~ .
and told me
“everyone is free to send out junk mail.”
Yeah,
It's my tough luck
I'm not free to refuse it.

While on the subject of mail, don’t you love those envelopes with instructions on how to open them? They are usually bills. You are supposed to CAREFULLY bend and tear off the right edge, then bend and CAREFULLY tear off the left edge, and finally the bottom edge, CAREFULLY, unfold and then re-use that same envelope by refolding it according to another set of instructions, sending your check or return message.

I see the purpose in this. Sure.
It saves the sender maybe half a cent by using the same envelope. Never mind that it costs the recipient 5 minutes to open the contraption.

I’ve learned to ignore those things and open the envelope the usual way, tearing it off with a finger, ruining the beautifully designed re-usable construction.

They’ll probably pass a law against doing that. I may end up in jail for not opening an envelope in the manner the government prescribes. In Patriot III it will probably be a criminal offense, like terrorism.


Copyright © 2003 by Andrew Rafalski