The Beetle   in free verse, man, free verse   I'm talking about beetles. Hear me? Bugs   that crawl around, six legs on weaving routes,   with flimsy antennae and shiny shells.   Just the other day I was thinking how if I had   six legs, they could have modeled the Mars rovers   after me instead. That would have been something,   knocking about in a crater, searching for water,   dying for lack of air. It has its pros and cons,      like anything else. If I had an irridescent shell,   I could save a lot of money on clothes--wouldn't   need them at all. People would be tipping their   sunglasses up to see if they saw me right,   metallic pink side by side metallic turquoise.   Don't stare. Keep moving. I'm already late for work.      If I had a pair of antennae sticking maybe two feet   into the sky, bowed in a gentle arc by gravity,   at one with the forces of physics, then I might pick   up on the chemical hints you've been leaving   around the house. I might have realized that the stink   in the garbage meant I was supposed to take it out,   that the colorful mold on the bathroom tile   meant the vent needed replacing, that the pieces   of the ceramic bowl that you threw at me and   shattered across the floor, had a message, a message   for me, a message that could not be deciphered   simply by collecting all the fragments in a dustpan.      If I was a beetle and I had been raised as a larva   moving through the surface dirt, dodging birds   and other beetles, if I had been wired the way   that insects are wired--knowing the truth,   knowing how to act by instinct, then I might   not have come to this place, might just have   stayed out in the yard, keeping to the moist,   shadowed spaces under rocks and rotting logs,   might not have found you,   and, when all is said and done, weighing the pros and cons,   that would have been a terrible mistake.