Robert Calvert at his angriest

I would see the city as a mutant among the wonders of the world.
It's chimneys polluting the air.
Its roots poisoning the earth.
It's tentacles setting one man against another
and strangling them both in their hopeless contest.


I would map the cities' highways and tunnels and bridges,
its subways and canals, its neighbourhoods adorned by beautiful homes
filled with priceless objects, rare libraries, and fine rooms.


Its clever networks of pipes and cables and wires under the streets.
Its Police departments and communication stations.
Its hospitals, churches, and temples.
Its administrative buildings crowded with overworked computers,
telephones, and servile clerks.
Then I would wage war against this city as if it were a living body.
I would welcome the night - sister of my skin, cousin of my shadow, and have her shelter me and help me in my battle.


I would lift the steel lids from the brothers and drop explosives to the black factories
and then I would run away and hide, waiting for the thunder which would trap, in mute telephone wires,
millions of unheard words.
Which would darken rooms full of white light and fearful people.


I would wait for the midnight storm which whips the streets and blurs all shapes
and I would hold my knife against the back of a doorman,
yawning in his gold braided uniform, and force him to lead me upstairs
where I would plunge my knife into his body.


I would visit the rich, and the comfortable, and the un-aware,
and their last screams would suffocate in their ornate curtains,
or tapestries and priceless carpets.
Their dead bodies pinned down by broken statues
would be gazed upon by slashed family portraits.


Then I would run to the highways and speedways that surge forward towards the city.
I would have with me bags full of bent nails to empty on the asphalt.




I would wait for the dawn to see cars, trucks, buses
approaching at great speed and hear the bursting of their tyres,
the screech of their wheels, the thunder of their steel bodies
suddenly growing weak as they crash into each other,
like wine glasses pushed off a table.


And in the morning I would go to sleep,
smiling in the face of the day,
the brother of my enemy.

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