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PORTSIDE CULTURE

WHO’S IN CHARGE HERE?  
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W. D. Ehrhart

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_ This poet has a skeptical say about the Higher Powers who control
twelve-step programs. _

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Who’s in Charge Here?

By W. D. Ehrhart

The Twelve-Step Programs all are built

on what each calls “a Higher Power.”

Call it the God of Our Understanding,

Supreme Being, maybe just plain God;

call it what you will: something bigger

than ourselves whose guidance we

ignore at peril of the consequences

of whatever vice we suffer from:

alcohol, overeating, undereating,

gambling, sex, drugs, rock-n-roll.

Name your poison, there’s a program.

And it seems to work for lots of folks;

lives transformed, walking miracles.

Good for them.  God bless ‘em,

every one.  But what about the ones

who try and try but never make it?

Where’s God when some drunk driver

kills a husband, wife, and infant?

Where’s the Higher Power when

a Muslim woman’s raped by thirteen

Hindus on a city bus in Gujarat.

Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, John

Foster Dulles and his brother

and Bubonic Plague, Wounded Knee

and Gaza and the list goes on and on.

If there’s a Higher Power who’s

in charge of all this madness,

someone ought to take Him out

behind the woodshed with a 2 by 4

and whack Him upside the head.

W. D. Ehrhart’s most recent collections are _Thank You for Your
Service: Collected Poems_ (McFarland) and _At Smedley Butler’s
Grave_ (Moonstone).

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