Ready arrows

It really should be something meaningful. something political. something sacrosanct from the well informed secular reaches of new york city night crawling where some real pulse of the free world beats with tastes that keep the righteous rumbling 'them faggots over east.'

But it's not.

Not really.

Today i lack the indignation to make my way off polling. today, really, i could give a shit. not because i'm lazy. not because i'm cross. not because there's a peaceful protest in my ennui (though if this were paris you'd see my white card...just not today).

But because there's no underdog.

No fucking meaning. no fucking real fight out there that could give me reason for party affiliation and part the seas to trump barack over hillary.

Hell, when i was a kid i advocated the republican party. i liked reagan and his post tumor hairdo. i danced with the right winged seat in new mexico and shook hands with good old rummy himself.

If memory serves i even followed allegiances to the first bush. the monster. the killer in the flesh (well before his seed made it's way to sight gags on the simpsons). prodigal beast of the cia.

I'm not sure why.

I guess i just liked the old man over the impish greek in the tank.

But that was childish. i know. i was a child, goddamnit, and well aware that my flights of fancy had no real impact on the world of old white crumpling men who overpopulated the electorate (and still do, my budding revolutionaries).

Then there was aids.

And that fucking changed everything.

Yes, i know the disease made it's mark on the american psyche when rock hudson first up and croaked right out of the closet and onto the nimble ears of a young feverish kid waiting in the emergency room for some relief to the vomit and shuddering but it wasn't until the nineties ushered in a real understanding of the disease and it's immediate implications to every living thing from the green monkeys of the african plains to the swing set of 42nd street that i understood the power of the political over how my friends and family could just manage to fucking survive.

It was about then that my impotent rage found a real focus in the bush flag. fifty skulls. hundreds of thousands more. agenda after agenda forsaking the people just for fucking someone other than the old white bag. dropping junkies. impoverished. innocent after innocent fated to unimaginable suffering because...well...shit, there are a thousand theories from duesberg to darwin that promulgate ideas about why the body pales against it's unseen enemies.

Fact of the matter is i started to fight. i started to argue. i threw chairs. fists. i had my fucking head kicked in. literally. figuratively. time and time and time again to get anyone to understand what was wrong with the crapshot idea that aids was an act of divination.

Through high school. into college.

I buried fathers. i kissed dead inspirations. i marched down seventh avenue in red marker reading 'red ribbons. red tape. what's the fucking difference?'

I gave time. i gave blood and when i was eighteen i gave my vote.

But it didn't matter.

By the time my voice had a chance to matter the country was ready for a new greenwich legacy. and then again four years later. but i persisted in giving my vote to the democratic party because anything was better than that son a bitch making travesty his tome.

But we lost, didn't we?

America caved to the warm whispers of daddy and his incessant mention of the other and his war to stop unerring ideas from blowing up in our fucking face.

Again.

And they didn't.

But we imploded, didn't we?

We fell under the spell of avarice and all his bastard sons where soon we'll suffocate because there's not enough power in one single vote to change this nation's torrid history or any of her backwards prospering madmen.

So why?

No vote today echoes my voice other than it's flagrant opposition to the lineage of the republicans and i don't want my voice to resound with warbling teenage spite. i want it to be strong. virulent, if need be. i want the strength of my beliefs to be reflected in the highest fucking office.

But that's not about to happen.

Not so long as we live in a republic. not so long as the panty-waisted killers run the show. not so long as politics is pandering.

Exclusively.

My vote doesn't count for shit.

And neither does yours.

Unless a couple hundred million happen to agree.

And those millions live within the right bounds constituencies.

So fuck it.

Take my primary. shove it up your coarse wound ass. tell me i'm an asshole for registering independent when there's evil in this world to defeat and you need every slack jawed idiot to agree.

I won't coddle the lesser of two anymore.

Not while i still have the chance to speak.
Man the Ramparts.mp3