A Poem When Otherwise Speechless Amidst the Primaries

Trafficking in the Human Soul,
or How to Weather Political Campaigns
and Commercial Marketing
by Cameron Miller

They traffic in the human soul
those candidates and their puppeteers
etching fantasy and self-interest upon our hearts.
With bullets we give them in dollars
they load mesmerizers
lyrical theme-a-tizers
gray-matter atomizers
and zap us
with weapons purchased
from merciless hawkers of debt and waste.

We are the field they walk through
picking us by Primary handfuls
before coming through with election combines
separating wheat from chaff.
All of us later burned in the fires
of their vainglory
and egomaniacal moment in the sun.
Not one ever left office
poorer, with less than going in.

Yet the even-year frenzy
syncopated by odd-year silences
dark and enslaving as it is
remains a small hazard
in the shadow of greed-mongers.
Their daily machine
skins our souls alive
ad by ad
sale by sale
image by image
lie by lie
titillating greed
by titillating
greed.

They turn up the heat
to boiling
and our hungers bubble, festering
in a stew of desire.
We want everything
and more.
We belong to them
soul and all
until death do us part.

The soul is a fragile gift.

It shrivels
in the cold night unprotected
and melts
in the hands of another.
When enclosed in a baggie of ego
it withers
petals, stems and all.
In the captivity of greed
sepsis grows.

Still, its seed
is always in us
apt to grow and blossom
from the smallest cue
or most demure whisper.
“Come back,” we can coo
and, “I’ll love you this time.”

It will come back if we own it
and refuse to give it away
and stubbornly hold on
even when the tugging is fierce.
Hold on
hold on
hold on
even when they want to take it again
with their slick and sticky
weapons of self-destruction.

We can vote
or buy and sell
as needed
without losing our souls
but it will not be easy.
We have lost ourselves before
and it can happen again
as easily as the dog sheds hair.

Be wary
hold on
find a community of resistant souls
in recovery.