JOHNMICHAEL SIMON POETRY

When this land

is given back to its owners

all your arrogance, your metastasized dwellings

monuments, insecticides, networks of

asphalt capillaries, of doubletalk

hens fed on antibiotics

tax collectors, bulldozers and sheep

 

Will be as dust on disused doorsteps

rotting timbers, thin whine of desert wind

blowing stinging particles of sand

over your severed limbs

 

Even as the vultures have had their say

and lurch away, great bags flapping

to some mountain retreat

we will emerge from cracks

reclaim what was always ours

this brown expanse of rubble littered landscape

on which to lay our eggs