imaginary cities: iconi --

City of emphasis mines and gravity bombs, assassination attempts and mourning news. City of lightning and turtle boat people. City of city slickers in emergency ponchos goose-stepping through puddles of rainbow-infected grease. Monumental city, shouldered with statues of great and far-flung revolutionary bandits. City of the comet Kohoutek and the Sun King. Wave your pink fronds in equal time, denizens. Men in short-sleeved shirts and ties as if this is Dallas in the 1960s; women in traditional dress and immaculate make-up and perfume. City of bombs reversing into the cargo bays of silver aeroplanes. City of cricket operas and cicada sonatas. Drizzle falls along the motorways, while distant guardhouses flicker in the dim fog. The self-important jeeps honk and rattle, slowing only for hairpin bends, or mountain curses. The pyramid, fashioned from the jetsam of a streamlined war, remains unoccupied. Even great leaders, it seems, must wait for sanctity to be betsowed upon them by temporal high priests. Bloodclots of wire strung along the tight hemisphere of the alleyway. Hold your heads up if you dare. Run willy-nilly backwards. Hit the extradition running. We have erected a gigantic wall to stop the winter from invading us. Our dear icicles splinter in the air. Our agents are everywhere, tracking your predilection for political rants with just the slightest hint of slaciousness. What is your reliability rating? Has it changed at any time during the past three days? Watch your step and don't say you weren't warned. Why are your hands cold? Where have you been? Midway through the historic annullment of our armistice, I took a sideswipe at the moon. In the end I only clubbed a monkey. Fishing plastic bags from the sky, a green boy with a swollen belly. Phosphorous flashes. The inner and the outer circle of an explosion. When will you cross that line thatched with straw, mountainous with geese?