Is there a slight chance

that priests may be "fixed"

when they slide out the birth canal?

The crowds want models

untouched by sullied earth

balloons tethered to a carnival board

This feeds the myth of divinity-priests

with necks bound and wrapped in black

serving God on silver plates

Their praying-field is a prison-yard

a cage filled with household pets

who beg for victuals at their owner's feasts

A key swings about their necks

but will they unlock the gate and flee

and be equals in the Jesus-quest?

*Reflections of Sue Halpern:

-This belief, that housing is a right, is deeply held by Janet Driver and her friends, and shared by many of those who work on behalf of the homeless.  It is a fundamentally American belief, this belief in rights; it is what becomes of a nation with a written, amendable constitution and philosophical affection for individualism.  Yet it will not do.  Rights, even natural or God-given ones, often require that governments and legislatures and courts codify them and when they are not codified, they cannot be said to exit.  And rights are transient: If they can be given, they can be taken away.  To call housing a right is to shift the debate away from the issue at hand - homelessness - to something more abstract -jurisprudence.  To call it a right is to misconstrue its real character.  Housing is,above all else, a need.  It is a need that exists and will continue to exist independent of any right that may satisfy it. But we are uncomfortable with needs unless they are our own.  In the language we share, the language of rights and duties, there is no word for giving people what they need.  The words we do have, like benefits and entitlements, are about granting people what they are owed, and what they are owed is limited - it is a line item in last year's budget.  We are lacking the vocabulary to think in broader, more generous terms.