Diagonally, by love and hate

in equal parts

propelled, the mob returns

like a chorus

the cops keep getting

hit with, in the head

brick and bottle tra la la

of fuck you, pig and die, pig, die
the mob, torn together

by each temporizing, tangled

moment in its series

returning along the old animal tracks

of total science to mark with metaphoric

shit and piss the places where the earth

parts ways with each reason for enduring:

its also-rans, its would-have-beens

crashing into the shatterproof

curves of the cell wall, behind which

the makers of measure and rule

shelter in disordered nomenclature,

recounting in pantomime

our unfortunate tenure

as minor villains among the plant life.
Just then, you feel the scare quotes

C-clamp your skull, interatomic

emoticons spazzing out intransitively

in the middle distance where demoralized

shifters replace all sense of the past

with continuously updated commentary

from the compliantly defiant crowds

who compare their purchases

with the bland openness of experience.
They will never be a real mob

now that nature has been democratized

by these marvelous poisons

our rounded-up truants

leave dusted upon the rocks and trees.

As for the rest of us, we learn

something important about ourselves

watching from the loading dock

as the mushroom cloud

announces the end of another season—

e.g., that each riot really is

an assemblage of other riots

washed up on the boulevards,

from whose faded corpses

one dresses and arms one’s comrades

the total inadequacy of which

as equipment for the task at hand

traces out in negative

the seat perilous of the party historical

the poetry of the future

whose sweet new sounds

will fill with meaning slowly

while the seas rise.
Can software destroy hardware?

Can a class, acting strictly as

a class, abolish all classes

as the answer to a badly phrased

question might by sheer force of obviousness

cause the questioner to rise

blankly and walk into the ocean,

while the black flags cut from the robes

of executed magistrates

wave non-semaphorically,

where hope ends and history starts.