The Deserving

8/7/2019 The Deserving

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The Deserving

by Guy Duperreault inspired by JG

The tse-tse fly, and malaria mosquitos,

cold viruses, tapeworms, and ticks,

rabies, and skunks, cancer, HIV and Ann Coulter;

gonorrhea, poisonous spiders and snakes,

killer bees, army ants and termintes, too;

mutant bacteria, black flies, horse flies,

athletes foot and herpes simplex;

farting dogs, halitosis and gum disease,

diverticulitis, cholesterol, and pernicious anemia;

all are alive on this planet with me.

Their presence in my otherwise perfect life,

even if kept out there, somewhere, away from me,

away from my perfect hair and manicured fingernails,

gives me indigestion and not just a few sleepless nights.

From the deepest place in the darkest corner of my self serving heart,

I want these things dead, and polio too.

Kill them, I cry, kill them all and make my little life a little nicer.

I even give money to my favorite evil killers

with well deserved pride and hope and pride

that these evils will be extirpated once and for all.

It has never crossed my mind that these malevolences

do not deserve to be alive on this planet with me.

I most certainly don't want them here, with me — especially Coulter!

but given that they are one of nature's natural abominations,

what does my judging them to be undeserving of life mean,

even if I'd thought that way?

As I muddled my way round these thoughts,

I stepped around a beggar, so filthy and foul smelling

I couldn't even tell with confidence his or her sex.

It's hat was between its legs, obscenely half crossed legs,

wherein I could see a few coins.



I spat at it,

and thought,

get cleaned up, you bum;

until you do, you don't deserve my charity, you haven't earned it.

Are you that stupid, you lazy fucking bum, not to realize that

you would get much further ahead by simply getting clean?

Are you so fucking lazy, you fucking bum, that you can't even

keep your lazy, stinking, fucking ass off of my street?

Why would you expect me to give you anything,

you undeserving, lazy, fucking bum, leaching my taxes by

befouling the street my taxes pay to keep clean?

I walked on, annoyed that such an undeserving human remnant

had nerve enough to sit in my city, on my sidewalk.

And I spat again, and thought about all those stupid food banks,

and poor houses, and goodwill charities.

Without them, these fucking ne'er-do-wells would learn their lessons,

the hard lessons, the real economic lessons,

of life or death and economic truth.

And then I realized that the dumbo do-gooders trying to help these wastrels

were just a big waste of human effort squandering

my taxes, and the so-called goodness of Christian charity.

All those fucking liberal do-gooders,

don't they realize that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink?

And if the dumb ass won't drink, then they don't deserve to be alive,

let alone leaching away from me

my — the — American dream,

the dream I have worked hard to get and which effort has entitled me to it.

I spat.

The unease I'd felt at seeing that bog of human excrement passed.

I felt again the glow of pride in my accomplishments,

and that settled my stomach, that

and the full knowledge that I had gotten from life what I'd deserved,

by my own efforts, as do all those whining, lazy, stupid, fucking panhandling bums.



And so I walked by,

head held high enough above its self-inflicted suffering

to render it invisible to my eyes, eyes that filled

with the primrose glow of my well deserved moral rectitude.

That night I was pleased that I was able to sleep like a baby,

soundly, deeply and at peace;

I was able to keep the abominations of nature out of sight and out of mind,

and the undeserving, too.

2011.02.02

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The Deserving