The Ogress

This city eats - her children!
Festoons herself in their entrails
Smacks her lips on soft flesh
Lights ten million cigarettes
with ten million lungs.
(A thousand myriad pinpricks
of cancerous, beautiful light.)

This city - traffic-heavy, full
of the smoke of cars, of buses,
of pizza ovens and barbecues.
Its air acrid, its sunsets glorious.
And in every gutter a drunkard,
under every roof a beggar, and
the beggar's companion - the policeman
and the policeman's trusty baton
lover of beggars' heads.

This city - ah!
Like a lover or a spider
will eat what she loves and
in throes of murderous ecstasy
leave her mark on you
heart and soul
lung and spirit
time and
space.