“A free-verse 20 line poem, unrhymed, in the style of John Ashbury's early poems in "Self-Portrait In A Convex Mirror" A meditation on politics and the thirst for power.”

A migraine of headlines splits the window-tree—

yellow delivery vans blink across the avenue,

their hesitation a relay of rain, or rumor,

amid the hypnotic machinery of noon.

Voice falters, reforms, rises in the throat

of a leader, his gaze spooning the world

like bright soup, never satisfied, though everyone

stands in the cauldron’s steam, indistinct, clapping

or yawning, as the news loops the same wound.

These corridors lead nowhere except back into themselves—

linoleum squeak, gold-flecked, the shape of waiting

molded into policy’s plastic fruit.

There is applause, we don’t remember starting,

and slogans drift like kites above a muddy lawn,

unstable as the air that twitches banners over the rotunda.

Time breaks apart—one second, another—

hands in perpetual motion: knocking, voting, grasping,

while the thirst, unquenchable and ordinary, passes

from mouth to mouth silent as a coin dropped in a fountain,

each gesture a bright wish disappearing in the swirl.

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