Bad People - By Robert Bly.
"A man told me once that all the 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 you to say, 'You.'
A lazy part of us is like a tumbleweed.
It doesn't move on its own.
It takes sometimes
a lot of Depression to get 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.