We were fighting about me,
Iraq
about politics,
about which I care nothing.
About which, I wish, the subject
would go away,
so the universe could go on
and leave them debating
in their caucus, the issues,
and what people should do.
How to raise children,
pay for bread.
None of which causes me to vote,
to follow the leader,
to insult my friends,
or go off planting bombs.
But it was a game we were playing.
You’re it, they yelled, you’re it!
Hide and seek with words.
Stumble over points of view,
and history portrayed as something
understood.
How things have come about,
where events are going.
How salvation is assured
or lost,
by the way we vote,
or, if nothing else,
how a fool like me
must be dealt with,
kept silent,
disfranchised,
for being self-centered,
willful,
delinquent,
dumb,
left out of school,
and converted
to God knows what,
to God knows who,
while I long
to have it over,
leave,
take my wine,
and have sex somewhere else.