bad-natured people are everywhere like flies upon a dead horse in a hot summer
they are set upon objects, things, situations
in a rather congenial viciousness
that is most often mistaken for courage
but generally
(setting aside bad companionship,
bad diet, bad breeding)
most acrimonious nerves
(setting aside bad elimination of wastes and so
forth) are caused by
failure.
and they fail
first
because they are simply incompetent at what they try to do
or be
and second
because of an educational system
and a
national philosophy which
beckons them higher than they are
able.
in other words, they are not failures
but unrealistic forces and demands make them feel to be failures
and so business is good for the
psychiatrists and psychologists
and the jails and the mental
institutions
(which are only dumping grounds for the overload from unhappy homes, thieves, skid
row and etc.)
there is no such thing as failure, there is only the
comparative grind, there is only the concept of
failure.
and a $175 an hour shrink won't even tell you
this
because
he's been taught by the book
just like his victim.

so take this poem and keep it somewhere for
ready reference

because it might not only save you
money
it might also save your
sad and angry
ass.

© Frank Silvanski