History Never Sent a Thank-You Card

 

I knew the believers in disruption.

I watched the message-senders, the duopoly breakers,

the wandering tribes of electoral purists

moving through decades of campaigns

with pamphlets in their hands and destiny in their teeth.

The Nader people.

The Steiniacs.

The West volk.

The Forwardians.

Countless others.

The people who hurled ballots into the machinery: 

Angry notes stuffed into bottles and cast into the sea.

They wanted to shake the pillars.

Smite the consultants.

They demanded that History stop, turn around, and listen.

And History never listened.  History just kept right on walking.  

Crushing their bottles full of message

back into sand.

History never sent a thank-you card, never signed for the package.

Everything returned, broken and COD.

Finally the same pilgrims, sifting the sand, invent a new revelation.

And it's so simple!

One sentence,

one offense,

one stain,

one moment,

one unacceptable utterance

annihilates all history 

and all ambiguity.

Now the choice is obvious and the logic is perfect.

Now the conclusion arrives with the force of scripture.

Never mind the past, the ledgers, the decades of evidence

stacked to the ceiling, smelling of damp, old libraries.

One offense outweighs everything.

And therefore the righteous must march, with banners flying,

Into the camp of the Others.  The rivals.  The tyrants.

Whose crimes are taller,  whose follies are deeper,

And whose diabolical record stretches back and back and back.

Because arithmetic has been revoked

and symbolism runs the show.

The years of disruption are over.  The message-sending has ceased.

The rebels have discovered obedience.

The only way forward is backwards.  

The only way to stop History is to speed it along.

As the grinding sand
shreds the gears of yesterday's allies 

The sound of it feel like a hymn

To some invisible power

Crouching just over the horizon.

And the prodigal iconoclasts have found their peace

As foot soldiers in the army 

Of everything they despise.  

No Fair Remembering Stuff