Keeping the Social Contract

When you look down on the broken

Are you surprised that no praise

Is offered up for your continued acceptance

Of their use of free emergency care?

Is it the certainty that the hungry

Waste their food stamps on specialty desserts,

From your local Whole Foods,

That causes you to oppose free food for the needy?

Does the need for an open, honest election

Prompt you to require personal identification

From people unable to meet the requirement

Within the narrow bounds you would allow?

Was the prosperity of the 1990’s

Insufficient for your growing “needs”,

Requiring a furtherance of the already

Disproportionate tax burden borne by others?

Why do you view the social contract,

That ushered in the greatness of America,

A greatness that might be shared by all the people,

An unacceptable weight after 75 years?

When did immigrants ,

A keystone of our continued strength,

Become so terrible a burden,

That you wish to refuse them entry? 

Have you become so fixed

In your universe

That you oppose any rule,

That strikes a note of charity or understanding?