the ballot, not the bullet

I'm here to remind you to vote, unless you're really conservative, in which case I'm here to remind you to forget to vote. Ha ha. Just kidding.

This morning Erik and I took our lavendar envelopes over to the church across the street and got stickers in return. Beforehand, we wrote a poem about it.

to vote in the morning

--I suppose
I should put on some clothes.
--Yep,
we're going to the polls.

Later we were referring to our ballots as our babies. We always get absentee ballots and then don't send them in on time and hand-deliver. This was our first vote voting in two different parties. He switched back to Democrat a few months ago. It reminds me of a Wallace Stevens poem-portion, stanza V of "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

Mine goes like this: I do not know which to prefer, the purity of ideals, or the possibility of actually winning an election. I will not tell you which party I belong to, but I'll give you a clue if that it starts with the letter G and ends with socialism.