“Jesus Was a Walking Public Option” By Bryan Borland

This struck me tonight as just about perfect.   As such, I post the work of  Bryan Borland, and his poetry.  His site “Poetic Grin” is really a unique and inspiring blog where he works a lot harder than the rest of us who share cyberspace.  Over the months I have argued that health care is a moral issue, and tonight the work of Borland, along with a bit of humor, hits the mark.  For more poetry, and just great reading head on over to his site.  Borland lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.

On his site he describes himself this way when talking about his influences to write and create.

Bryan is influenced on a daily basis by the timeless poetry of Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg, gods to whom his words of praise can add nothing.  By John Steinbeck, whose prose contained more poetry than the world realizes. By Thom Gunn, who lived the concept of evolution. By Dennis Cooper, whose writing is so fearless it will leave you with a bloody nose.  By Sylvia Plath, who haunts Bryan’s home at night but who is welcome anytime. By Harold Norse, who shined light for those who didn’t even realize they were in the dark. By Maya Angelou, who introduced Bryan to poetry and whose simple, confident,  and elegant style embraces him like a grandmother’s kitchen. By Vytautas Pliura, whose poem “Thomas” still makes Bryan cry. By Gavin Dillard and Timothy Liu, for their respective anthologies on gay poetry (and the accompanying history lessons). By the writers and poets, published and unpublished, who harness the fire to create – and who burn the world in their wake.

JESUS WAS A WALKING PUBLIC OPTION

Many are the afflictions of the righteous,
but the Lord delivers him out of them all.
He guards all his bones; not one of them is broken
unless he’s failed to meet his deductible.

Jesus never required a co-pay
from those who came to
be cured of their diseases,
the great multitudes of lame, blind, mute,
who laid down at his feet,
and were healed
despite pre-existing condition,

yet it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle
than for a sick man to enter
a waiting room without insurance.