Backed with flared gunpowder and brass
the crowd falls into a remorseful spirit
because the feeling’s been raised before
when touch and the machine were separate.
To warm the hands now a switch
not an armpit or thigh guards and offers heat,
fear has tasted and hogged even the body hairs.
A thousand dollars line every hole
and the taste, the pungency of legal tender
madden the allergic man who has become
a thing of dust, oil, and terror.
 
City of wine, loving witch
who follows with patient diamonds,
each stroke against the lamp-pole
of hitcher’s pencil saying I hate this place,
I want to go home, I am a man today,
and illuminates public places
with private magnificence where I began,
 
you transfix the reactor builders
tearing back the guts torn away by
wildest howling bomb, your vice
and crucible and sign
which admits no discussion,
and drive them to the other side of the pasture
where the shade is chilling, limpid
with plastic labia and white flowers,
fearsome,
the triple thrust turns the legs to goat haunches
 
if cauliflower lasts,
if the football crumbles before it’s pressed.