The voice that launched a thousand quips
Belonged to Arnold Stang.
It now is stilled beneath the sod;
We'll miss its' urban twang.
An unpretentious fellow who lives on in memory;
A stalwart in the ranks of noble risibility.
Here's hoping that as you reside
In some good Great Unknown
They'll let you play the clown again
Into God's microphone.
Prosperity makes people think that poverty's a sin;
Just ask the man whose trousers are held up with safety pin.
Nobody buys him new clothes or will ask him how he feels
About the slips and slides he's had on Life's banana peels.
Or rather, no one listens to his sometimes loud complaints –
They must presume that silence is what makes 'em all good saints.
A house, a car, a steady job – good Christians must have these;
Otherwise they're treated like they're covered in rank fleas.
The dreamer and the poet, and those paralyzed by want,
Sup perhaps less often at the Savior's golden font
While we scramble past them with our tithes and big donations
(because it's hard to love a man more than our own Foundations.)
We all know there was Lazarus, the beggar who got crumbs –
But certainly he wasn't like our stinky modern bums!
Our exegesis tells us that the rich do not all burn;
Nor are a people saved if but too little they do earn.
There is a happy medium 'tween want and gross excess;
But still it is a game with losers, like financial chess.
Not everyone can learn the skills to finally checkmate
The storms that threaten to destroy our dreams and our estate.
Today we catch ambition like it was a modern plague—
But to some the fruits of labor seem a little vague.
We cast more stones in anger than we do bread on the water;
Even though we all do things we know we shouldn't oughter.
The poor grow ever larger, and I guess they are to blame.
The rich grow ever richer, and that too's a dirty shame.
I do not want to judge the rich and since, myself, I'm broke –
I'll wait until the next life when I'll ask: "Hey, what's the joke?"
