SHAME

To the Pathetic Members of the

Extraordinary Session of the

Wisconsin Legislature

There are desperate people in this State.

People who can’t get out of bed

in the morning because they’re so sick

or afraid or depressed or impoverished

or hooked on some filthy drug

they took because they were in pain

or sick or afraid or depressed or impoverished.

 

Now you come with your titles and your

personal fortunes and your letterhead

with matching envelopes at taxpayer

expense and your benefits and the

best medical insurance money can buy

and your reserved parking spots

and club memberships and you argue

in the sacred halls and chambers built

before any of you were born by people

who spit more eloquently than you speak

and you dare to bicker before the

people because you don’t like the very rules

you were elected and sworn to uphold.

 

You call each other names.

You do this before the elderly in their care facilities

or sitting alone in their homes.

You do it before the children before they go to

school, waiting for their bus or walking

through the neighborhoods they hope are safe.

You do it before the single mothers and

the unemployed fathers,

you trade insults while policemen approach a car

without knowing what’s inside or firemen

enter a building without knowing if the gas is off.

You sulk and accuse while teachers try to make themselves

heard in a classroom full of chaos or a doctor

realized he can’t treat his patient the way

they need treatment because the insurance

company says No.

 

You stand in the halls of government

and act like idiots, the worst kind of idiots,

the spoiled, belligerent kind who start a fight

or break things they don’t like and bully

because they can’t get their way and

because above all you’re afraid of

losing what you never really owned,

the power the People gave you in trust

to help not yourselves to more power

but the People who gave it to you.

You should be ashamed.

if it were up to me I’d walk into your hallowed

chambers with a baseball bat and

smash it to pieces against your ornate

rostrum, swearing like a sailor and

telling you what I think of your betrayal

of the Savior or the Virgin or the Prophet

or whoever the hell you hide behind

to do your dirty work.

 

It occurs to me there’s a chapel in

the State Capital. If there is I expect

to find a mirror there on the High Altar

where you kneel and pray before

each Session, worshipping

the Divine.