A Prayer of a Taxpayer

A Prayer of a Taxpayer

Judges, who rule the world by laws,

Will ye despise the righteous cause,

            When th’ injured poor before ye stands?

Dare you condemn the righteous poor,

And let rich sinners ‘scape secure,

While gold and greatness bribe your hands?

            Isaac Watts, Psalm 58,

 Warning to Magistrates

My soul is dark. My brain is drained,

deranged, as if I were mad.

Amazed, I wonder in a maze:

my servants misbehave. It’s sad.

It’s actually more than weird:

I pay them, but they disobey:

the other day they put on riot gear

and clubbed some people who just talked,

arrested an old woman in the park,

and I was thinking as I walked:

am I a masochist? It’s crazy!

Did I pay taxes to support democracy

in Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, or Yemen?

            Therefore the names of Heaven, Ghost, and Daemon,

Remain the records of their vain endeavor,

Frail spells — whose uttered charm might not avail to sever…

My soul is dark. My heart is just a piece of bark

eaten by some hungry elk or deer,

and I exclaimed: OMG, oh LOL, oh dear,

save that blessed one percent, take my advice,

and put them on some kind of Noah’s ark

or take them in your paradise,

please don’t forget to take the Murdochs,

they will establish free hacked press up there,

a heavenly tabloid, enterprise,

a new endeavor, a whole new epoch,

and if You want a nice and tasty supper,

take Martha Stewart, a chef, to that upper-

class world of stars and constellations

and save us from a mental constipation,

and maybe our hell down here

won’t be so dark.