Polling Places

I sit outside the polls having exercised my voice in the only meaningful way possible.

Nobody offered me free coffee for my convictions. Nobody asked because my answer might have conflicted with their hopes, their compliance funds, their private punditry and their public progressivism. They read the polls and placed me in the category that filled their needs – to demonize or sympathize were the same in some way. I remember when people made their choices in the booth and their opinions in the bar, not in herds seeking hope in human vessels. I recall when partisans carried clubs and torches, not stolen signs. What do we carry now? How do we want to be carried? Whose card should be punched? Who is represented in a representative democracy? When did a campaign of issues and plan become antiquated? When debates cease to be conversations? When did we forget that it’s a bad idea to judge a candidate by the color of his prose or the content of his sound bites? When did the right to choose become the rule?

My shirt says “I didn’t vote…” on the front. Nobody reads the back. It says “…for who you think I should have.”