Freakshow

You look up at that flag
Your heart brimming with patriotism
You could've been born elsewhere
Dancing to a different rhetoric,
Revelling in another anthem.

You're happy with your life
Insurance paid for that vacation
You could've been there around 1929
And have massacred your way,
Through the Great Depression.

You love your parents
And they love you back
You could've been an orphan,
Knocking on doors at Thanksgiving;
Felt up by paedophiles otherwise.

She's the love of your life
You can't imagine away
The very thought makes you cry
You could've missed that bus,
And picked up amorous flesh the rest of your life.

All life's a freakshow
Could've turned out so different
Death - now THAT, is certain.
How do you manage to live,
When you know .... it's coming?