Klondike at the gallows
Staring away his sentence,
The lonely people lined up for a thrill —
His creaking fall, as Christ rises every Spring.
The phone rings — not the Governor
(He's trying to find out when life begins),
It's just another angry commentator
Taking away more of his precious sympathy.
When he almost died, at thirty five,
He thought of how his billions couldn't help him,
And there, in the hospital ward, he swore
He would never ask for favors
And would never hurt a creature any more.
But this vow entailed certain compromises
He was not equipped to make —
So he gave away his money
To the most undeserving and ungrateful,
The violently powerless, the anti-social homeless.
He waited with a wad for the first rip-off artist to approach,
So he could hand him the cash without having to be asked.
He funded shelters in the suburbs,
Methadone clinics in the shopping malls,
He had some twisted dream that with all his money
He was beyond the law.
He thought if he returned the phone calls
And answered every letter with enough diplomacy and hope
That would be enough.
But wars are not like that.
They carted off his refugees, thinking them his friends,
And nodded, smelled corruption, when he purchased the jail
And replaced it with a high rise to house the murderers —
The white doctor they sent to him came away shaking
So hard he couldn't hold a cigarette.
The newspapers printed stories of sleaze and gross debaucheries,
Knowing he would meekly protest, but he proudly declared
All of it was true, what a shame they only printed
A small fraction of his indiscretions.
It was time to call in the law.
Treason, bribery, revolution, read the warrant,
So he hired the worst lawyers he could find
(Who were not only inept, but wanted to see him fry),
Rigged the jury, delivered the evidence, but, of course, he got off
And the people rose in fury how the rich escape justice.
All he could say to the murderous mob
Was that the rich invented justice to give the poor something to do
Besides dream of being rich.
At that, the New York Times rethought its position on lynching,
And with corporations held a telethon
With starving babies and crippled retards
All screaming "Klondike must go."
Philosophers came down from their mountain caves
To declaim "the man who would make us believe
That money is a vacuum to fill empty values
And that freedom is only selfishness,
When it is quite the other way around."
They even brought M.L. King back from the dead
To say "I cannot trust a man like him, who has never,
For justification, cited my name."
Then they rolled the horrifying pictures:
Klondike driving hundreds of Porches into the sea,
Passing out Rolexes to people without jobs,
Dropping a confetti of $100 bills on the White House lawn
As the first children stooped to pick some up.
He was so amused he called in a pledge himself,
And almost wished he had friends, so they could laugh with him,
But he knew they wouldn't be laughing.
The cops came several times to get him, but the smell and sight
Of the wasted people who lived in his house always drew them away.
Special tactical squads went in with helicopters to snatch him up,
But they came away with a double-breasted gentleman
Who swore that Teddy Roosevelt was President.
The real President came on TV one day asking for help,
For suggestions on how to get Klondike.
The letters poured in; they sent ruffians with Third World experience
Into his den, but they were arrested by the police before entering.
They tried again. They told the police, the media, the Pope,
But they neglected to tell Klondike
Who, if he'd heard, would have gladly obliged them by being there,
But, as it was, he was in Mexico City trading
Personal computers for indian beads to junkies.
By the time he got back, someone had freaked
At all the undercover cops and torched his house.
So Klondike found seedy dives, the better to get caught,
He mistakenly thought, for they somehow imagined lavish penthouse suites,
So Klondike remained miserable and free.
He turned himself in at some ghetto police station,
But they laughed at his presumption, that someone so well behaved
Could be so corrupt.
He rode the subway, pulled his money out of bank machines.
He had used the assumed names so that no one could know
Where the gifts came from, but it saddened him now
That it made him impossible to track.
Getting desperate, he ran up against a gang of prostitutes
Shrieking "look, I am Klondike" but they thought him too sick
For anything but the perfunctory offer of sex,
Which he gratefully refused, wondering at last how he ever came to care
For this madness now pursuing him.
The profligate horror continued, and the authorities
Were no closer to bringing him to justice
When he was spotted one day, buying every confection from an ancient Mister Softee truck
That had strayed too far from the green fields.
The driver sensed something as Klondike threw all the eclairs in the dumpster,
So he tailed him, at a distance, as he peeled off
Hundred dollar bills to spike-haired urchins in high tops,
Not even smiling, as they begged for more.
When he walked into the doughnut shop, his fate was sealed.
Klondike at the gallows
Reached into his junkyard of philosophies
Searching for the right final gift as he scanned
The imperturbable faces that paid to see his demise;
What lesson could he tell those who had seen his
Generosity with envy, who had seen him as another power among many
That didn't come through in the end, who didn't understand
That he really didn't care anyway?
He tried to explain, but all he could say was
"As long as the oppressed would rather suffer than educate,
I'll suffer."
Which would have been fine if
The rope hadn't broke.
