Be Nice to People

Be nice to people
Walking on graves
Making a game of old hard won ways
Beating each other with bad kebab splatter
Making a gutter out of grace

Be nice to people
Big money mits or looking for loss with a pointy stick
Sent by their simpering
Bent by the breeze
Painting the earth with sick

Be nice to people
Poking in holes
Fingering sores
Picking their blisters
Beggin' for applause
Cajoling and closing their minds and their doors
Abusive and fragile and bored

Be nice to people
Who kiss with a sneer
Connive and contrive and divide
Jeer absentmindedly
Clearly and blindly
Who need and they need without aim but precisely
Who take
And hate
And fear

Be nice to people
But not down your nose
Not cos your clever
And better than all those
Not in the name of some kind of snarky hierarchy but
Plainly, and painfully true;
Not with your cane
With your hands

I mean, it's
Not like there's nothing
We don't understand
Not to be kind, nor cruel
Be nice
Be nice to people
It passes the time?
It's harder to do and if you can't that's fine
And if you're not, you know, they probably won't mind
But it's more like being alive
And if nothing else
It's more dignified

Be nice to people
I don't know why

Be nice to people
I don't know why
Not on behalf of the man in the sky
Not to feel good about yourself when you die
Be nice to people
If you had it described as unjust

All the same
It wouldn't betray
Any trust
And if anyone tries to tell you that you must
They don't speak
On behalf
Of all
Of us