Pick
You’re genocide
Won side or the other
Gun to head
Ahead to gun
Aliens pervade our atmosphere
As whirled wore thee
Restless natives no so slight
Wear homieland security rules
Redcoats and bluecoats
Everyday cover ups
Of fuzz overruling
Wile privates everywhere
As wee divine
A bomb in nation
Knot our own
As they get
Our scapegoat
As if too give
Pour excuses
Tired pleas
And huddled asses
Wretchedly refuse
Their teaming shore
Up walls
In efface of stranger contentions
Reproving those
Fresh off the bout
Or slaves too buy gone ways
The wiled West
And marshal law
For sum of the people
OK, corral most of the people
Distantly droning on
Pining a bout boots on the ground
As pay no tension to boots on the neck
Of silenced know bodies
Fueled into thinking
It’s awe we Cain do
As we might be Abel
Too win with a faction of the vote
Seduced by sects
Of phallus choices
And foe alternatives
This poem sticks to my recent theme of radical change needed to the U.S. electoral system posing as democracy. More specifically, the national or federal elections system needs a complete overhaul. Ranked choice voting would be revolutionary. We the people should end money as free speech, with its tsunami of money from the rich and corporate “persons” overwhelming voters and voters’ choice of candidates. The electoral college should graduate finally to something else. An actual representative congress, akin to many European parliaments, would better assure diversity and fuel true coalition building rather than simple domination of one party over the other. Still, this poems strikes a deeper and immediate chord. Voters could benefit much in the long run by refusing to negotiate with terrorists. The two-party duopoly holds voters hostage to lethal choices for the planet and humanity. Believe it or not, billions of non-voters around the planet have a stake in the health of American empire — that stake is often through their heart! Plus, the growing internal inequalities and ghettoizing of America could use some serious care and attention. It’s time to demand freedom to choose sustainable, life-compatible candidates and political parties. More directly, voters could exercise power more productively by demonstrating such freedom rather than simply wishing for freedom to be granted to them from above by the powers that be. How many cycles of abuse do we the people need to endure to muster the courage and fortitude to demand nothing less than fair elections and candidates that both represent and are responsive to the people? Corporate persons selecting corporate candidates is unacceptable. But, alas, we teach people how to treat us. 
As Frederick Douglass so shrewdly pointed out, “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you’ve found out the exact measure of injustice which will be imposed on them.” Actually, the powers that be don’t really mind if we put on a good show with whiny grievances or articulate analyses, as long as we don’t change our behavior. In this context, that means our voting behavior and the long, disciplined work of non-electoral political action. Change takes time. Healthy behaviors often take years, decades, sometimes generations, to manifest themselves visibly in the body politic. If we don’t have the patience, the fortitude, the vision, and the faith that we CAN do better, then we will end up with the same old crap over and over again. This crap may have improved packaging. This crap may contain 25% more crap. Butt, in the end, if we take it, it is ours — all for the price of a mortgaged future! May we vote without fear. May we vote FOR love. May we vote with a hope that transcends tried and true naive optimism of the same-old, same-old delivering the same-old, same-old. Let’s make it so.
