The Innards Are Discouraging

When people give people advice
On how to stay healthy, they say,
Eat well, exercise, be happy.

Eating well changes day-to-day.
Exercise is a mountaineer
On a ridge between two canyons,

Too Little To Do Any Good
And Pathologically Too Much.
You’ll live a little longer,

Maybe be a bit happier,
If you keep your cleats on that ridge.
And speaking of being happy,

Our advice there is, Jut Be It.
Stay Positive. Reject Grimness.
Don’t Worry. These are quotations

From management professionals
And equivalent to saying,
The key to immortality—

Don’t die. Advice is like humor
Is like frogs, as E.B. White wrote.
(Look it up. Wisdom loves Bartlett’s.)

Although, unlike frogs and humor,
Dissected advice never dies,
It just grows more discouraging.