Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Just Another Election Night Drama

They argued the whole time they spent in line
While others scanned the voter’s guides
For how to select death and taxes dutifully
On “Hanging” Tadd Romney’s privatized vote-count machines,
And there was no point they agreed upon
Except the everything that their love was shared
Somehow, and that there was no monitor here
To disentangle right from wrong.

They tried to see each other’s views
Like they tried to see the subtle shades
Between the heart disease and cancer candidates,
But soon enough they fell back on the blaming of the victim,
The other one responsible for a world gone grossly wrong.

Solutions seemed like covenants, 
Offers seemed like smoke,
While the issues really driving them
On their low road to oblivion
Were carefully talked around.

They agreed at last on something,
That they lived at the same number, the same street,
And could swear so before the Phys Ed magistrate, 
But as they went to separate curtains, 
Alone with their thoughts and God, 
They knew how hopeless were their choices: 
To consume or be consumed, to feel pain or just be numb. 
They gave desultory touch to dumb black buttons 
Representing some infinitesimal fraction
Of a superfluous abstraction
Of an actual compromised person
Who seemed somewhat like them,
And they walked away in silence
To the long night of the Chinese knives,
Of counting promises that had wore down trust, 
And adding up the perverse choices
That they seemed each time to make.

You can whistle past the graveyard ‘til
You’re red, white and blue in the face
But you’ll end up in that diner
Cattycorner from the windowless telecom center
To work out in surrender
The terms of your personal responsibility
For all the pain you felt and gave, 
And watch your life fly down the streets
And alleyways like pages of a book caught in a maelstrom
Over endless cups of coffee.

You don’t even have to look at her face
To know she sits in solidarity 
And togetherness across from you
Like a broken, battered crow,
Maintaining a quiet aplomb and dignity
As she twirls her spoon around the yellowing
Coffee that's delivered all night long
By tough but not unfeeling waitresses.

None of the other customers
Even look up from their cups in your direction.
They too have died a thousand times
And the Danish, after all is done and said, 
Is pretty good, enough it seems
To make an Alamo of deep and pointless rage
Dissolve forgotten in the smoke
Of a new morning.