If we have to smother our candles
and let electricity in through the front door
If you herd us into cities
where we’ll be shelved one
on top of the other
If our furniture will be assembled
like automobiles
and our streets will be forests of steel
Then let our lamp necks be twisted
into the stems of the flowers we won’t see anymore
Let their glass shades be colored
like the wings of the most flagrant insects
Let the outsides of our buildings thrive with jungles of ornament
and the smashed tiles of old floors be crazy-quilted into a
serpentine wall
whose only purpose is to be beautiful
Let all right angles squares and rectangles be stretched bent melted
or warped
Let us have our revenge
on the perfect straight line