Ian McShane Should Play All the Baddies in the Torah – a Poem for Korach

A rebellion against the establishment.
A dissenting family swallowed by the earth.
A sudden punitive plague eliminated by a man
wielding a staff that would soon sprout
almond blossoms.

Are you listening HBO? These are the plot points
of an epic trailer for a weekly series I’d love to watch
in the fall. Honestly, I’d love to watch now.
But the space between the announcement of
a production and its appearance in my digital world
makes me kvetch like two hundred fifty Israelites
in the desert who have nothing better to do.

(As a side note, if you could get Ian McShane
to play Korach, the rebel, I’ll double the amount.
I’m paying you.)

And now that I think about it, it’s not so much
of a side note. Oh the bad men McShane has played
on pay TV. Stealing our screens with an infectious
no good. Like a Korach, rebel with a cause,
challenging his first cousin Moses whose record,
so far, is pretty good if you consider we’re
no longer in Egypt.

When the priests inside the tabernacle were
following the instructions for how to make their
holy garments, Korach was on the outskirts with
a pop up Challenge Authority t-shirt shop.
Except instead of “challenge” it was the ancient
Israelite teenage rebellious slang of the day.
He was the ultimate other side of the aisle
refusing to pass any useful legislation but
making darn sure his colleagues on the right
didn’t either.

And what do we get for our youthful rebellions?
Most of us grow up, have children, watch them
question the same authority we are now a part of.
Almond blossoms in our closets, ready to pull out
to display our parlor tricks of wisdom. Doing
everything we can to prevent our young rebels
from being swallowed up by the earth.

I’m not usually the type to write a poem about
questioning authority and revolution. Outside of
an occasional strongly worded email to a
customer service department, I’m much more of
a status-quo kind of guy. But Korach, swallowed
inside the earth reminds me, we don’t always
get our way…and that is our way.