03.31.05 - 5:24 p.m.

I have a theory, or, not a theory so much as a phrase, an idea that can sink with the worst of everything, but which won't weigh me down, no too much. That's a circular introduction, so let me start afresh: the local public radio station broke in to the last few minutes of Adventures in Good Music this morning to report that Terri Schiavo had died. Of course, she died ten - what, fifteen? - years ago, and has been no more than an inert... It's all quite horrible. The media circus, the awful people making stupid pronouncements, the right-wing crazies making hay about Terri Schiavo but not about the Texas law that allows hospitals to remove life support from "hopeless cases" who can't pay in the absense of a living will and over the objections of the family if they family can't find someone else to take the patient within ten days. In most cases, that's probably the humane course of action, but the law isn't designed to be humane, it's designed to save money that might otherwise be spent on those awful, dirty, stinking poor people,

After some brief, deeply awful blather (in these media-circus circumstances every last bit of blather, including NPR blather, about the whole sad, sad Schiavo case is deeply awful), they played the George W. Bush soundbite o' the day, something about how, in a "Culture of Life," the strong have to protect the weak. That's just lovely. That sentiment, poured onto the Schiavo case, is just some "Precious Moments" sort of figurine about love. It's stupid, sentimental, meaningless crap that loads of people would like to grant some sort of real significance. In a Culture of Life, oh, I don't know... a real "Culture of Life" - oh, god, where to start? How about a living wage? How about valuing human beings as much as or more than we value corporations? How about fucking ANWR? How about, George W. Bush, the torture at Abu Ghraib? Extra-judicial executions? Indefinitely detaining prisoners outside the physical borders of the United States for the express purpose of flagrantly violating the judicial process that would have otherwise taken place were said prisoners to be detained within the United States? How about the fucking death penalty?

George W. Bush, Tom DeLay, Randall Terry and every damn who down in hooterville who think that Terri Schiavo should be sustained indefinitely with artificial nutrition and hydration by whatever means necessary after an exhaustive judicial evaluation of the situation but who simultaneously supports, essentially, gutting the fucking federal fucking programs that have paid for her care lo these fifteen years, and who believes, somehow, that food stamps, or Head Start programs, or WIC, or AFDC, or fucking college grants to poor students are wrong is a failed human being.

They are failed human beings, and I am so deeply tired of their bullshit.

In fact, I'm deeply tired, hence, the disjointed-ness of today's outrage. I was much more jointed (or, maybe not) when I wrote this poem: