Politics

“Politics is the art of making the inevitable appear to be a matter of wise human choice.” Quentin Crisp

Turns out people are in charge! In all their
idiosyncratic variations – every tiny one converges
with the other into something strange and large –
a mixture of the textures of this humid February

day – cool and slightly clammy: overcast
and insecurely winter: as if something private
wished to splinter in and sneak a drug of Spring
into the thing – the stated aim, today, of all

the city’s bumbling sentient beings, trying
in their separate ways to concentrate, and get from
here to there and back again, from psychopaths
who tote their venomous intentions to sweet

grandmothers who dote on the inventions of their
children’s children – stated aim? To vote. And then –
what then? New York City stays the pretty creature
it has always been: created by its dazed inhabitants

indulging our particular concoctions of remorse
and yearning, flirting and bewilderment, and all
the vast variety of human sin: whose last impiety’s
reserved for the inevitable bin to which the whole

amassing carcass of the mass of us will soon,
at our innumerable separate exit cues, creep toward
and climb the sides of to jump in. Meanwhile, I slice
an onion into small translucent bits and sprinkle it

on sliced sharp cheddar cheese, and put the lot
on crackers: picked my laundry up just now as well:
right after leaving an Italian church’s basement
where I took my breathing presence for a moment,

voting for the candidate who, I have been informed,
has (anyway) a chance of staving off our headlong
dive into another hell. Turns out people are in charge!
I wonder who of them will break the spell.





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