I should have swung.
I should have tried harder.
I should have paid more attention.
I should have gotten laid more in college.
I should have been a beginner more often.
I should have not been so serious all the time.
I should have gotten over my fear of ostriches.
I should have struck up more conversations with strangers.
I should have brushed more thoroughly and flossed once in a while.
I should have made enough money to buy my aging parents a house.
I should have made enough money not to have to hit up my aging parents for a loan that one time when my year in the cabin came to an end with me in abject poverty.
I should have made better use of my year in the cabin, becoming pure or something instead of just a little lonelier and poorer and maybe a little more aware of the silence at the heart of everything.
I should have given up the world of what if, the world of someday, and worked as hard as I could every day, like my immigrant ancestors, those short gray toilers who sacrificed themselves for the future of their family, i.e., dreaming, lazing, napping me.
I should have just started writing whatever came to mind and pushed it as far as I could and discovered undiscovered lands within or something instead of trying to mimic my literary heroes with every timid word.
I should have volunteered at the homeless shelter or participated in voter registration drives or taught some fatherless kid to shoot a jump shot.
I should have become a teacher early on and taken my lumps and hung with it.
I should have just left Marv Albert alone that time at the airport.
I should have not said all the stupid things I said.
I should have said other things.
I should have said nothing.
I should have sung.
Cardboard Gods 