ozarque's Journal

Linguistics; stylistics; sf poetry being made, round four; revisions, part two...
1. Finishing up from yesterday.....

"The Supreme Court Justices hastily met to consider the question
of whether it was illegal to refuse to vote.
It never had been before --
but then a lot of things were now legal and illegal
that never had been, before."

I was genuinely sorry to have to give up "convened" for "met" -- because "convened" echoed both the set "court/consider/question" and the set "vote/of/never," in a single word. But that's all right. Accuracy trumps alliteration. My thanks to

judith_s,

beckyzoole, and

dteleki for alerting me to the problem, and to

foomf for providing the solution.

2. Moving on to a new draft that includes the revision above... a lot of minor tweaking... and a change in the second section based on a comment from

dteleki....

[no title I'm satisfied with yet]

In November of the dreary year 2008,
they had a presidential election,
and nobody came.
In the polling places the voting machines were waiting,
with their attendants;
and nobody came.

CNN sent journalists searching for voters.
Knocking on doors;
bursting into offices;
racing through malls;
stopping people on the streets.
Not asking them, for once,
"How did that make you feel?"
Asking them, this time:
"When are you going to go vote?"
And everywhere the answer was the same:
"When you put a candidate I can respect --
a candidate that can fix this mess --
on the ballot,
then I'll go vote."

By noon the politicians were in a panic.
Congress was meeting in secret emergency session.
The leader of the devastated world demanded legislation
that would force the people to vote.
"Use the draft!" he bellowed. "Round them up!
Smoke 'em out of their holes!"

The Supreme Court Justices hastily met to consider the question
of whether it was illegal to refuse to vote.
It never had been before --
but then a lot of things were now legal and illegal
that never had been, before.

"It won't be everybody," the pundits predicted.
"Pretty soon -- look, people will start turning up.
You know the American people, for heaven's sakes!
They can't agree on anything. Hey....
It won't be everybody."

But night came,
and it was still everybody.
The voting-machine attendants had all gone home,
tired of wasting their time.

"Well," said a pundit,
part of a panel of pundits:
"It's certainly not as messy as guillotines."

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The first draft of this poem is at http://ozarque.livejournal.com/299995.html .

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A partial index to the posts in this journal is at http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=ozarque .