To make my love political,
to open my heart’s ballot box
just a little, let me settle
this dispute that’s got public thought

reaching out, grabbing after what
for so long I kept locked within,
my own government’s poor little
citizens walking off the job

talking of the subliminal,
claiming rhetoric’s been the cause
of their moral loss and downfall,
as if words were bombs poets drop

‘just because,’ just to paradox—
speaking of a revolution,
have you ever thought how awful
it would be if we let you talk?

By some grace, some late miracle
letting you taste how much it costs
to create, to conjure, to call
into being what gods concoct,

only then could you fools construct
meaning your piecemeal existence
lacks, revealing in your revolt
what your souls want is what I’m such

an expert at making, but all
of you greet artworks like products,
eyeing with resistance total
uplifting, your transcendence lost

since you can’t afford to be caught
buying into what McLuhan
taught: that the medium itself
is the message, that what you’ve got

is a marriage of potentials—
any thing possible—you ought
to open your minds if you will
have any say in what you want,

since speaking up is what gets off
people unafraid of saying
what they’re wanting, a ritual
of electing someone to love.