That’s a lie.

Every single Right Wing Senator whole-heartedly supports single payer Health Care coverage wholly paid for by the Federal Government because he has it. His whole family has it. Obama has it. Dick Cheney has it. All the moderates who struggle with where to position themselves on this issue – they have it. Every Representative in the House who has taken contributions from a pharmaceutical company and can’t find clarity on this issue – he (in a few cases, she) has it too: full government sponsored single payer Health Care coverage. All their employees have it.

They believe in it, alright. And not a single one of them has stopped taking it. Proof is in the nasty pudding.

I’ve tried to point this out for months now. Nobody has seemed particularly concerned. Why? Why are we basically going to live with this kind of inequity? Do we believe these people have somehow earned it, like the CEOs earned all those bonuses? Do we believe they have a right because we elected them?

Why hasn’t a single Senator (or Congressman/woman) offered to give it up and go out on his/her own like so many of the rest of us to find some “great” corporate developed Health Care Plan? Why? Why hasn’t at least one secretary in a government office done it? And if it is such a horribly socialistic thing, why hasn’t the GOP left it en mass, like they’re leaving (in droves now) the concept of unemployment insurance?

And why haven’t there been piles of petitions demanding all these Representatives put the lives where their mouths are? Or why isn’t there a real Tea Party movement along the lines of what was actually going on back there in Colonial Boston?

It’s depressing. It’s tragic. It’s a joke, but I don’t have anything left in me that wants to laugh or even cry about it. What has happened to this country that we have not only allowed this to happen, but we have allowed ourselves now to live with it and (given the Health Care that many of our citizen now – and will – have) die with it?

But one thing sticks. I can’t get it out of my head. Almost everyone there at the tables was a big, fat, white guy. Most of them had white hair. White on white. And the other thing that kept hitting me was, yes, everyone of those big fat white-white guys has got a really good Health Care Plan, paid fully by his government: total Health Care coverage. (And then there was the news earlier in the week about Dick Cheney and his fifth heart attack and how his survival proved – according to his proud doctors – what great Health Care the former VP had. Were these doctors just laughing at the rest of us because that’s all that can be done at this point?)

Big, fat, well-taken-care-of white-white guys, mostly in suits. A few women, yeah (also in suits). A black president. Cool. But mostly big fat white-white guys, many with a kind of redness around the eyes and cheeks. Puffy and red. Little networks of blue veins around the noses. Red, white and blue from too much alcohol. Too much beef. Reminds me of the 1960s – actually the 1940s – scratch that – 1890. So what’s changed in a hundred and ten years if guys like this still get whatever they want and then meet around long tables with blue and yellow bunting to hash out what to do with the rest of us and the rest of the pie?

But jeeze, it’s pretty tough to do that, isn’t it – all these complicated issues and the money that’s left after they’ve taken care of themselves and their pals? Not to mention all that money needed to get re-elected and so forth…

And that single, black, mother with her three kids in the ghetto? It’s all her fault, of course (more or less) that she hasn’t gotten her act pulled better-together. Never mind she’s twenty-two, was forced to try to fight through a laughably underfunded school system, et cetera. Besides, she’s got the internet now, right? And there’s Google. And another good thing  – her kids seem to be getting thinner and she’s getting thinner and you live longer if you’re thinner. Maybe that’s why these big, fat, white guys need all that great Health Care and she and her kids don’t.

But I ramble. And I suppose I’m a little confused (I’m a white guy too, by the way -same age as a lot of those leading statesmen).  And I do have to admit that I have good Health Care too. Hmmm. Interesting…

But still, I ramble. Sorry.

How about this – these big, fat, white guys (and the few woman, and the black president and even me, I guess) – we all get our Health Care plug pulled till this damn thing gets sorted out.

This is not an impossible idea if enough of us get together (at this point in the endless Health Care debate) and say, “No! Enough is enough! It’s not fair. You/me – we get no Health Care till you figure out Health Care for everybody. And then…

what everybody else gets, you mostly big, fat white representatives get too. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

Not impossible. We just need some big fat petitions. A national movement. Use the internet. “You guys get what we get. Nothing more. Nothing less.” It’d be nice if the President (not being red, pasty white and blue) could say it too  — that he’d stop his government sponsored fully covered single payer Health Care Plan for himself and his family and challenge the House, Senate (even the Supreme Court) to voluntarily do the same until this damn thing gets solved for the people that all of these mostly big fat white rich guys were put into office to serve.

But I don’t see that in the cards, so that leaves it up to us, the people. Why should that have changed after all these years either? A groundswell. Grassroots. A rebellion again, of sorts, because enough is enough. Sound like another Tea Party? Two Tea Parties at the same time? Why not?

I’m putting on the red dress, Ma,
and heading back onto the trucker’s lane

to spread my legs (all hose pulled tight
and bra that pushes me toward heaven)

to do my due

and give a few (the tired and poor)
a swim along this once pure shore

(my closest pal the crack boy down on
his scarred fours who sells the minutes
on the city’s parking meters just off Fifth
at half the price).

Negotiate. I know my job, for everything’s
negotiable and what remains is that small
moment in the hay

where I must always
give my heart away.

I wish you a happy birthday.
Birth you on this day here. For you dear.
Just you. You! I wish you so happy on this day.
On each day. On everyday.
Wishes for birth of an everyday kind,
every minute birth, second birth,
deep as contractions. An infant and cake kind.
And icing. And candles.
Every instant those eye flames more guttering
and gathering as each year’s cake breathing
brings mothering kind more here
than fear and pain kept here when we see
what goes on here as each birth
that’s born anywhere turns to so unclear
until in the next breath
we undo the hard death
and reborn the infant and mother and father
on each day and everyday
the moments of birthday,
a kind day, a wish day
on your day,
this birthday.