A thought at breakfast, still and sad,
makes you pause the butter knife:
the chances are you've already had
the happiest moment of your life.

Mark,

Compared to mine, your life was better;
you had a knife and even butter.

Well, it's usually margarine, but that wouldn't scan.

A Troika

Vladimir Putin’s losing cred.
Some hope he’ll soon be stone-cold dead.

They’re saying Vlad’s a Kleptocrat
Who steals their food so they eat rat.

Once a Soviet, always Russian,
Vlad attacks with Trump’s permission.

I tried to write a poem today
Which would have brought a big payday,
But language foiled my brilliant plan:
The f@#king truth wouldn't scan.

Mark, I reckon "the chances are" is too optimistic. Don't give us any hope!

It's just not what poetry is for! - give or take the odd Russian depressive. Re. the previous warnings of impending doom, nothing beats Spike Milligan's proposed epitaph.
(Was it ever executed?)

"I told you I was poorly."

Matt,

A thought at breakfast, still and sad,
makes you pause the butter knife:
you know that you've already had
the happiest moment of your life.

Happy now? ;)

(though I prefer my original: less hyperbole, more resigned realism = more genuinely depressing)

Edit: Aaron. That made me laugh..

HALLMARK

A baby's born. From his first breath
he merely is postponing death
so that he might, before the end,
discover he can't comprehend
the world he's born to, or the pain
of being trapped inside his brain
alongside other people who,
like him, don't seem to have a clue,
and even when the boy grows old,
and after, when his corpse is cold,
he'll never know his life was just
a trick performed by wind and dust.