Men in Suits

Men in suits are on television, debating
About our future, arguing
About our past.
The ice caps are melting, the air is warming and natural disasters
Are beginning to seem almost commonplace.
Oprah’s telling me how to clip coupons, save
Some money on the cost of milk and I’m paying
Four dollars a gallon for gas. No savings to speak of.
Living month to month to pay the mortgage.
And mom’s car sits, rotting
In the rain because storage is two hundred
A month beyond my budget.
Just let go of an employee with a three year old child today,
So I guess I helped create
Another American family without health insurance.
And people are fighting in the streets, and in the courts
threatening legal action against one another
for silly things
For problems that could have been solved,
With a little dollop of honest communication.
We’re still killing innocent people in Iraq
And nobody can say what “success” looks like there.
We’re still pumping poison into the veins of killers, to teach them
That killing is wrong, is immoral, is unethical.
And I’m thinking about how I’ll never be able to afford
To live in the neighborhood I grew up in;
The house that was paid for on one middle class salary.
And I’m thinking about how my kids
Will be paying twenty thousand a year
For a state school
And how I might have to go back on my promise
Of sending my offspring to public school.

What happened to our priorities.
What happened to our country.
What happened to each generation, exceeding the accomplishments,
The educations,
The success of the last.
I worry maybe, those days are done.
I think maybe all the billions spent making bombs,
Could have been used to get people off the street, give children health care, educate the masses, crack down on crime, help rehabilitate prisoners, teach illiterate people to read and succeed and a million, well a billion, well I guess, several billion, other things that would make our world a more peaceful, educated, and healthy place for everyone. But I guess these are the sort of beliefs that make me just another crazy liberal. These things are wishful thinking, they are naïve, they are impossible, they are unimportant when compared with the ‘larger issues.’ Or so I’m told.