Bad People

Painting by Vera Nazarian


Bad People


A man told me once
that all bad people were needed.
Maybe not all,
but your fingernails you need;
they are really claws, and we know
Claws. The sharks—what about them?
They make other fish swim faster.
The hard-faced men in black coats
who chase you for hours in dreams- -
that’s the only way to get you
To the shore.
Sometimes those hard women
Who abandon you get to say, "You."
A lazy part of us is like
tumbleweeds moving.
Then they blow across
three or four States
This man told me that
things work together.
Bad handwriting sometimes leads
to new ideas;
And a careless God—
who refuses to let you
Eat from the Tree of Knowledge—can lead
To books, and eventually to us. We write
Poems with lies in them,
but they help a little.


Robert Bly

Posted over on Matrix