Look at yourself
with your sad eyes
in your low lands:
You know full well
that it could be worse.
Much worse.
Orders of magnitude worse.
You could be dead in a ditch.
You could be dead in a ditch
after being raped by a snake.
You could be dead in a ditch
before being raped by a snake
(which maybe is no worse
but probably less dignified
for the snake).

You could’ve been fired
from a job that you hated
after begging to keep the job
after making important life decisions
to keep the job
that you knew you hated
because you deemed it
in some way you couldn’t subsequently recall
important to your sense of normalcy
which is only a word
that the pre-Depression establishment created
to try to keep the proletariat down
– but I may have gotten off track.
It could’ve been worse.

You could’ve been a nineteenth century proletariat.
You could have been a twenty third century proletariat
one of the billions of half-serfs
that we’ll all become in a world
with eight haves
and eighteen billion have-nots,
all wrestling for a single crust
to go with plutocrat-offered bratwurst.
It could be wurst.

It’s bad. I ain’t denying
but there’s always a way that the fates can defy and
make an occasion just worse and worse
it’s a fact that imagination is a curse
and perverse that this verse won’t reverse
your position that everything bad
can’t be worse.
But it could be worse.
Whatever it is…
Oh, shit
that’s bad.