{"id":88,"date":"2012-06-28T13:58:45","date_gmt":"2012-06-28T17:58:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/?p=88"},"modified":"2023-03-02T03:29:47","modified_gmt":"2023-03-02T07:29:47","slug":"a-poem-about-insurance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/?p=88","title":{"rendered":"a poem about insurance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Explication:\u00a0<\/strong> In honor of the Supreme Court’s favorable ruling today on what we’ve come to call ObamaCare, I’m dusting off my “poem about insurance.”\u00a0 This happened a few years ago when my friend and neighbor John was over; we were talking about firetrucks going up the street, which led to a discussion of home insurance, and then to insurance in general.\u00a0 He looked at me and said, “You’re the poet – write a poem about that!”\u00a0 How could I step down from a challenge like that?<\/em><\/p>\n

———————————————————————————-<\/p>\n

A poem about insurance?<\/p>\n

Who would want to write it?
\nWho would want to read it?
\nWho would underwrite it?<\/p>\n

(Oh hey, this could be fun.)<\/p>\n

But this would be a poem to mean and do,
\nand when I asked old you-know-who,
\nold Ars McLeish, he said I didn’t have to mean,
\njust be.<\/p>\n

But then a tiger sprang at me,
\nlashing his tail and demanding to be
\nlet out, to stand out in the light.<\/p>\n

Well? \u00a0I couldn’t just leave him there,
\nall burning bright,
\nnow could I?<\/p>\n

And so, a poem about insurance.<\/p>\n

And why not?
\nShould I never join the topics of the day?
\nShould I always troll the tropics,
\nnever straying from
\nimagination’s bumpy way?<\/p>\n

And so, a poem about insurance.<\/p>\n

And is it really such a stretch?
\nFrom universal love
\nto universal life?
\nFrom health insurance for a warrior
\nto a poet’s song of strife?<\/p>\n

If Hiawatha, if he were here,
\nhad to wait to see a doctor,
\nhad to show his signed referral,
\njust to make the damned appointment,
\nduring normal business hours
\nyou can bet he’d be quite testy
\nwith the telephonic system
\n(“Please press two if you speak English”)
\nwith the bureaucratic bullshit
\nof the Mighty Permanente
\nGitchie Goo Insurance, Inc.<\/p>\n

And every doc who ever saw him,
\nalways worried of malpractice,
\nparanoia of their station,
\nsecret longing for the old days,
\nwishing that they still made house calls,
\nwishing that they didn’t have to
\nhear the bureaucratic bullshit
\nof the Mighty Permanente
\nGitchie Goo Insurance, Inc.<\/p>\n

And every doc who ever saw him,
\nHiawatha and the skin rash,
\nHiawatha’s orthopedist,
\nHiawatha’s next transfusion,
\nHiawatha’s medication
\ncosts a half a million dollars,
\nwhich is why our Hiawatha
\npresses two and speaks in English.<\/p>\n

For the Mighty Permanente
\nGitchie Goo Insurance, Inc,
\ncovers all his medication,
\nall his Prozac and his flu shots,
\ncovers half his orthodontia,
\nyearly checkups for the prostate
\nof the aging Hiawatha.<\/p>\n

And our aged and ailing warrior
\nkeeps his premiums quite current
\nkeeps his ratings in good standing
\nquite regardless of the hardship
\nthis imposes on his budget.<\/p>\n

Hiawatha used to wonder
\nif this Gitchie Goo Insurance
\nwasn’t just more White Man trouble,
\nwasn’t just a way to gamble.
\n” ‘Give me money every season,
\n<\/em>I’ll return more when you need it?’
\n<\/em>Why don’t I simply keep my money?
\nThen I’ll have it when I need it.
\nAnd besides, I feel just fine.”<\/p>\n

Hiawatha was immortal
\nback when he was in his twenties,
\nhad no need for this insurance
\non his health or on his wigwam,
\non his mighty war club, Bigstick,
\non his mittens, Miturhandin,
\non his shining big sea yacht.<\/p>\n

(This was before his epic battles
\nwith his father, mighty Break Wind,
\nwith the wampum queen, Pearl Feather,
\nwith the Manitos of mischief,
\nand those alliterative evils
\nof et cetera and ad nauseum.)<\/p>\n

But one day when he was older,
\nas he watched his burning wigwam
\nin the glare of big fork lightning
\nand he realized that he hadn’t
\nsaved that money as he’d meant to,
\nhe decided that insurance
\nmight not be quite such a bad thing.<\/p>\n

So now the Mighty Permanente
\nGitchie Goo Insurance, Inc.,
\ncovers all his home and horses
\n(with a rider on the albums
\nhe’s collected since the Thirties
\nand his hi-fi record player
\nwith its diamond-carbide needle),
\ncovers comprehensive damage
\nfor his mittens, Miturhandin,
\nand collision for his Bigstick,
\nand the shining big sea yacht.<\/p>\n

And he knows that old Nokomis,
\nancient wise and wizened mother,
\nneeds her insulin each evening,
\nand her pension from the old days
\ndoesn’t meet the cost of healthcare.<\/p>\n

And he knows that Chibiabos,
\nyounger brother on his Dad’s side,
\nstill on methadone from rehab,
\nwould be sliding back in no time
\nif it weren’t for all the wampum
\nthat his caseworker from Upstate
\nspends on him and dozens like him.<\/p>\n

And the Mighty Permanente
\nGitchie Goo Insurance, Inc.,
\nlike a dozen others like it
\nmakes its wampum running tables
\nlike a big 3-D casino.
\nActuarial pit bosses
\ncover life’s expected losses
\nby spreading out the risk of failure
\namong thousands of subscribers.<\/p>\n

For if mighty Hiawatha
\nwere the only paying member
\nof the Mighty Permanente
\nGitchie Goo Insurance, Inc.,
\nthen it wouldn’t have the wampum
\nto replace his burning wigwam
\nor his torn and tattered mittens
\nor to fix the leaking yacht.<\/p>\n

But by having more subscribers
\nthan the nighttime ocean starfield
\nboasts of shining points of brightness,
\nand despite the aggravation
\nof their bureaucratic bullshit,
\nthe Mighty Permanente
\nGitchie Goo Insurance, Inc.,
\ncan cover all of these, plus more things
\nthat you and I will never dream of.<\/p>\n

And since not all of the subscribers\u2019
\nlucky numbers hit the jackpot,
\nthe Gitchie Goo Insurance pit boss
\ntakes their cash and lets it ride.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Explication:\u00a0 In honor of the Supreme Court’s favorable ruling today on what we’ve come to call ObamaCare, I’m dusting off my “poem about insurance.”\u00a0 This happened a few years ago…<\/p>\n

Continue readinga poem about insurance<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":667,"href":"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions\/667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}