Maybe long ago, Jonathan Swift
told toddler Senator Chuck Schumer (D., NY)
stories about High Priests who stepped out
upon Temple balcony, addressed Jerusalem,
told those under Roman occupation,
what’s needed most, stave off January cold,
rumors of killer plagues,
need for Jewish homeland security
a shady Savior come to save people from sin,
Mohammedan horses at Damascus gate.
Grown-up, sophisticated, AIPAC endorsed,
yesterday, Big Senator Chuck Schumer
addressed America and lamented
how wrong were Democrats for helping
uninsured Americans who merely represent
“5% of the nation’s registered vote.”
Like a corporate sponsored prophet,
well endowed with America’s best available
family health care insurance coverage,
Senator Schumer pontificated,
“Americans cry out for an end to Recession,
better wages, more jobs,
NOT FOR HEALTH CARE COVERAGE!”
Rabbi Gesa Ederberg and others saw more,
“good jobs,” 1939 Berlin.
They remember zealots angered by political deceit,
flight for suicidal last stand upon Masada hilltop,
little Samaritans on run, crystal shards, Ferguson fire.
They saw Manhattan Jews serve idols,
Moloch, and Wall Street “bottom line.”
They watched brilliant physicists create atomic bomb.
Who knows, who knows?
Did Elie Wiesel ever watch Hollywood’s Ben Hur,
how Judah’s mother and sister wasted away
within an uninsured F.E.M.A. leper colony,
until Charlton Heston’s N.R.A. loving face appeared?
“O America, how you’re forever on your own now,”
said a CNN reporter who fled Marsala’s chariot.
Intermission (“$8.00 XL-Popcorn… Support Keystone XL Pipeline!”)
Sleeping prophets forgot more than US Senators told.
They saw Wounded Knee massacre, Israeli attack
upon USS Liberty, Waco, Shock and Awe,
some bewail Paul Wellstone’s mysterious death.
Why in the name of Booker T. Washington,
who cries for Nickel Mines school girls?
O how can any of this be real?
Prior to Schumer’s Curse upon Obamacare,
did well fed prophet, Alan Greenspan,
fail to notice how squeezed US workers somehow
managed to pay in excess of $12,000 annual
premium for their Fortune 500 company’s
offer of family health insurance coverage?
The Magi Senate speak not of dangers outlined
in twisted Zionist star alignment,
and America falls while Dancing with the Stars.
Prologue:
A Towanda stone mason I got to know years ago,
(58 years old) has family of four.
Freddie made living by hand carving names
and dates into cemetery monuments.
2005, he suffered major heart attack,
lucky to survive, today Freddie changes parts
for a Towing and Recovery Company.
Upon work place bench, no Temple balcony,
Freddie sipped Campbell Soup from thermos.
Hair’s gray, cool pony-tail now,
Freddie wore an old red flannel shirt once
made by Woolrich, Clinton County, PA.
He mourned inability to carve names
into local’s stone monuments anymore,
but he had family Obamacare, $38.50 a month
Stone mason windfalls never more,
and in contrast to Chuck Schumer’s vision,
Freddie cared lots about “people dying in
stupid wars, from hunger, from strange drugs.”
Come Winter 2014. he carefully designed
family climate change, survivalist plans.
Neighbors considered Freddie “a crazy old man,”
a bit selfish, but Lilliputian street-smart,
Freddie opted for A.C.A. Gold Plan,
he grew long and scruffy beard,
cut-back on cost for Barbasol shaving cream
just like Senator Al Gore once did in order to
warm a percentage of Duck Dynasty voters.