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.
♠