Sweep Dreams

Picasso

Clean Sweep Dream

This morning
an encouraging stat
flashed across the news screen —
57% of American voters
are anti-incumbent.

Of course,
it is no secret that American
voters didn’t elect GW Bush
either time he ran,
and our voting system will
continue to have the zero
credibility problem
until we demand
that voting machines
produce voting receipts
that will go in ballot boxes
which will be available
for recount
and verification

Myth after myth
has shattered
since I walked out
of my sweet home town
on the shores of Lake Michigan —
Here's the latest.

Public opinion has
no influence on
governmental policy
in the United States.

It doesn’t matter what we say,
think, want.

The same companies
who make ATM machines
that spit out receipts
all over the world
make paperless
voting machines.

And we can’t make
them change by voting.

The clean sweep
Americans want will be muddied
until we again demand
the right to vote.

In the meantime
watch Diebolt, Sequoia,
Hart reverse votes,
one out of very "x" –
x morphing exponentially
so that the margin
goes Republican —

while we dream
of a clean sweep, of
throwing out every elected
official that has voted
against the environment,
for war, for corporate hand outs,
for fascist judges,
against health, port security,
and for the patriot act.

©Susan Bright

Susan Bright is the author of nineteen books of poetry. She is the editor of Plain View Press which since 1975 has published one-hundred-and-fifty books. Her work as a poet, publisher, activist and educator has taken her all over the United States and abroad. Her most recent book, The Layers of Our Seeing, is a collection of poetry, photographs and essays about peace done in collaboration with photographer Alan Pogue and Middle Eastern journalist, Muna Hamzeh.

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oZ note:

watch George Galloway.