The Storm-Front In A Politician's Face Poem by Denis Mair

Her pretty face has turned into a wart of rage

As if a pit bull were leaping halfway out from the facial planes

As if the cosmic crab were breaking through a rift in dimensions

What if her snarl reaches me in my domestic zone?

It has reached me in my curdled liver

In my doom-scrolling distraction

In a previous lifetime I must have neglected her

She's an accusing child, neglected by everybody

In every single lifetime up to now

If our collective karma were better, she wouldn't be this way

Make no mistake, she is a force majeure

But the poll workers have a brotherhood

And they won't work with screwballs

Meanwhile she is sending screwballs their way by psychic projection

With her 'see what happens' storm-front

But the poll workers are the last bastion of Western civ

They don't want boors and chimps at the table

They'll train you as long as it takes to train you

And they'll double check you, and you'll double check each other

Using a well-designed double blind workflow process

Designed to be boor-proof, which is why it goes slowly

Designed to shut out an influx of stupid

Because we need to pick better candidates

And the candidates should care about people

And they should already be doing things for people

Which is at least a start, and it can start right here

Making the rage monsters pay at the polls

They have to pay for their rage mongering outbursts

So the poll workers say 'Give it a break; Trust the system'

You probably can't build a better system from whole cloth

You have to respect the system to know the system

Surprise, surprise, that's the way the system works

You try to game the system and end up with egg on your face

And so you use hints of violence as a gold standard

For your nod-and-wink currency of attack and belittlement

Thank heavens for valiant vote counters

Counting to preserve the vote counting system.

Let the lady politician complain about the slow vote counting.

Just as she once complained about any kind of streamlining

And now she's saying she and her kind will rectify it

They'll do away with machines and mail-ins and early voting

We will see what kind of un-streamlined streamlining

She is going to concoct with a pinch of fairy dust

And what cavity she's going to pull it out of

Or will she pull it right out of her peevish storm-front

That blows behind the knot of her tightened brows?