Election Poems is a listening project. The poems you will read in this series document and respond to the politicized non-dialogue that seems to have invaded all forms of conversation these days, and the gas balloon of portent that’s escaping the seams. This is also a personal project. The content comes exclusively from my own listening experience, meaning conversations that people have had with me or things they have said in my presence, for better or worse, from the 2008 election cycle to the present. The results are not always easy to digest, and many of the poems deal with painful, disturbing, or incendiary ideas that have not gone away, as our current election season so aptly reminds us. But to be clear, the project is not about politicians, pundits, or campaigns, or the rhetorical moves they make in order to earn a vote, or tell the story of a given election. It is about everyone who is not running for office, and who/how we are to each other in an era where politics infuses everything.
For more information about this series and its concept, check out the introductory post. Previous poems can also be found on the series page. A new installment and image will appear every Tuesday through November 2016 (one week post-election), featuring poems from throughout the project, as well as one or more new poems written specifically for the current week. The poems are titled by number, but will not appear in order.
97
My disapproval makes a difference
No is a form of philanthropy too
20
If you’re not picking a side, for real, please don’t be proud of it
Go on if that’s your conviction
But nobody’s going to applaud your proud ass
Or that garbage-time touchdown celebration you call a conscience
Easy target moving off the mark
You won’t get ‘em next year
57
I can’t hear you when you come at me like that
Hands in my face or feet on my wrists
You’re barely real to me as it is
And now I keep peeking through my fingers
Bracing for you
Trying to make the slit where you get in narrow and inconspicuous
So small that I can’t tell what’s about to happen
Or the difference between you and all that I can imagine
5
Wait
Stop
You’re making what I meant
sound like what I said
40
This is awkward
You know, the whole thing about what you hoped for and/or were promised
And what things were going to be like
And who wasn’t going to keep doing terrible stuff
Or being a complete shit
And who would get to do more cool stuff
And be a total badass
And the ones who would finally get the respect or disrespect
And/or the justice they deserve
Like we talked about
For like, decades maybe
Cancelled, sorry
My bad
Just turn the car around
And don’t worry
It’ll all be fine
The past can’t destroy you
It can only absorb you again
