~~~
"I would look at them in the audience:
the frail old lady with thin white hair;
the big, rough biker-looking guy;
the pleasant middle-aged teacher;
the silver-haired accountant with two young kids;
the beat-up middle-aged woman with rheumy alcoholic eyes who is sweetly gracious, modest, as she moves to give you a seat;
the obese, wild-haired man bursting out of his torn, cracked leather jacket;
the giggly, chatty middle-aged redhead in the NoLabels.org sweatshirt;
the Patti Smith-looking woman, tall, pale and austere; the hunky football player;
the skinny hipster girl in architect eyeglasses and torn jeans. Everybody listening so closely to the candidates.
Beret guy, too, with a white bandage on his eye and a beard that went down to the third button of his shirt.
What a crew we are."

Peggy Noonan, political columnist, writing about a New Hampshire meet-the-candidates Town Hall 2016

~~~

confess here an avowed legally, registered voter,
who fails to vote with almost
perfectly regular regularity

for his solitary voice almost always
swallowed whole,
living in the futility utility of a self-selected body politic,
geographical location where
dissent is a now pathetic revolutionary concept lost
in the new intolerance of a place,
where there is none of the
demanding New England hampshired state
that brooks, adheres to
only the standard highest,

"live free or die"

in the sweeping crush of nationalized,
commoditized would be Commodores,
whose sounds bite,
elephantine donkeys and donkeyed elephants,
leading us to the same slaughterhouse,
by different paths

but I am a crew member here...

proud and free,
proud to be,
amidst this mess of characters,
homogenous in their pursuit
of independent assaying
of the character of men
to whom we would
our liberty, entrust

God, it gives me breathing space,
these unusual common folk, who with the
unpracticed eye of a periodic literary critic,
in their first-in-the-nation primary,
selected the would be revolutionaries extremists,
polar opposites

God bless their orneriness,
though both of their final aisles choices to me,
anathema,
message received,
we are tired of the ordinary hacks,
who think their longevity means success,
want a sea core change,
a fresh revolution
as principled as the original...

but they suit up, on uncomfortable
folding chairs,
willing to listen,
all the while acknowledging
their presence physical,
evidentiary proofs each,
that you can fool some of the people
some of the time,
but you cannot fool
all the people
all the time

a man proud to be a crew member,
of this cantankerous irascible population
who will vote this time
but not on any machine that offers up
more of the same ole insane,
will exercise my vote,
in the most old fashioned now waining way

*the same way
I write poetry,
upon a ballot where I will
write in, write on with
ink and paper,
tag a name of person
good enough for representing the
interests best
of this rag tag crew o'mine,
who I love so....