Archive
01/28/10 - (1)
The Skids
Admittedly, to be too sure, You don't (and never will) consider yourself much of a brain trust, Yet you've always known or believed, anyway, That you could hold your own, in the common-sense department, When it comes to making death-and-life-altering decisions.
After all, your failure to graduate from sixth grade, Arrive at junior high, with a "Take a Ride on the Reading" card, Your landing in juvie, at twelve, With a "Go Directly to Jail" citation, for vandalizing cars, Guaranteed you an F in formal education but a PhD in street smarts,
Sealing your destiny as a depths-of-society bottom feeder, Mandating that, at best, you'd be deader than a ghetto doornail Before reaching the age for being eligible to vote and soldier, Let alone before getting to the storied twenty-one (Though that didn't thwart your Head Start thrust toward alcoholism),
Which has made your meteoric rise to the heights so inspiring — From assistant dog catcher, to city-hall mail-sorter, To driver for an aldermanic incumbent from the urban Ward 4, To his successor, to mayor, to governor, to House Minority Whip, Speaker, To junior senator, to president elect, to commander in chief.
Where else but here in America, where else, indeed, Can such abundant opportunity open, so wide, its arms and coffers, Embrace the impoverished, the disenfranchised, the challenged, Provide second and tenth chances to those who run afoul of fate, And offer, for a nominal kickback, leniency, commutation, pardon, fame? Ah, but hasn't this always been the norm, the exceptional rule By which this great nation revitalizes itself daily? Who better than you would know, from his heart to his gonads, That bottom feeders who squeak the loudest Not only get the lucre to grease the skids but get the skids as well?
01/28/10 - (1)
|
|||
|
|||
