Archive 09/06/11

 

   

Labor Day Paean

                                                                  

Labor Day weekend parades across America's landscape,

Preens, prances, and promenades, though it ran its unionized race

Four, three, two decades ago, without knowing it,

Failing to see, realize, imagine the ultimate implications

Inherent in exporting the nation's blue-collar jobs to everywhere else,

In exchange for "Always Low Prices. Always," "Save Money. Live Better,"

"Expect More. Pay Less," "The Good Life at a Great Price. Guaranteed."

 

The bottom-line trouble is that, these days of Beltway-gridlock politics,

None of us has the slightest red-white-and-blue clue

As to how to forage enough sustenance to survive joblessness,

Wheedle, inveigle, flimflam enough coupons and food stamps,

And none of us, except Warren Buffett and his Hail-Merry Pranksters,

Can prophesy which of the next ten Crocs is about to drop,

How any of us will exist, survive, find a single-family storm sewer.

 

How is it that our enterprise, once comprised of lean, mean dreamers —

Franklins, Jeffersons, Whitneys, Edisons, Carnegies, Fords, Gateses —

Has gone fallow so fast, gone to seed, gone AWOL-in-a-handbasket,

Forfeiting its glory, its grace, its intergalactic superiority,

For a hunky-dory dump-truck load of made-in-China/-India everythings,

Fabricated-in-Mexico obesity and Type 2 diabetes,

IED-detonated-in-Iraq-and-Afghanistan full-blown PTSD and quadraplegia?

 

Oh, what a blessing it is, to have our babies born in deep-fat fryers,

Home-schooled by illiterate, friends-with-benefits Fundamentalists,

Mentored by gay, pederastic Catholic priests and bomb-jacketed imams!

Who, in the stifling confines of Philadelphia's Independence Hall,

Would have ever imagined that, in less than three centuries,

This original aggregation of religious and divine-right-of-kings dissenters

Would become the poster bastard for bedlam, pandemonium, FUBAR?

Tonight, dining by myself, in a half-empty restaurant,

I raise my wine bottle to Uncle Sam Walton and Aunt Jemima-Target,

Dip my Italian bread in Greek olive oil with Turkish tomato flakes,

Toast, with my Chilean Chianti, this "Barely Laboring Man/Woman"'s Day,

And pretend that the U.S.A. has just beat shit out of the Japs and Krauts,

Is on the brink of seeing itself in its Chevrolet, walking a mile for a Camel,

Inviting the neighbors in, to watch Uncle Miltie, on its twelve-inch DuMont,

 

Reveling in its Kenmore and Whirlpool and Maytag washer and drier,

Packard and Studebaker and Henry J and Edsel of the brief future,

Reddi-wip and Bonnee Buttered Beefsteak and Eggo waffle,

Ray Kroc's McDonald's and Colonel Sanders's Kentucky Fried Chicken,

Sam Walton's humble all-for-one-one-for-all Bentonville five-and-dime,

Carl Buchan's North Wilkesboro hardware turned mega-big-box Lowe's . . .

And back again, to Warren Buffett, bailing out our scuttled rust-bucket —

 

The USS SOS America, skippered by a Grand Wizard Kenyan Muslim,

Collecting barnacles, on the floor of Davy Jones's dried-up mud puddle.

And I drink my bottle, to the dregs (including the dregs),

Realizing, on this belabored Labor Day, that the only viable businesses —

Banks, churches, fast-fooderies, emergency rooms and urgent-care units,

Retirement communities, and tattoo parlors — are immune to unions

And that the only growth industry yet growing is unemployment.

 

 

 

 

09/06/11

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
       

 

 

 
   
Site contents Copyright © 2017, Louis Daniel Brodsky
Visit Louis Daniel Brodsky on Facebook!