At this Hermes smites him with his staff, saying, ‘Will you not allow the gods to judge men as you judge ants?’

When the Kings of Brazil are on the march
dismay is general, since they have all one soul
and make bridges of one another. River of
pureprose or chaingang of instramentality.
They cast stars as lots and clawmarch: disorderers
of seedstores, swarmtroopers, spillagers,
sappers, deforesters of pages, agents of
entail, retail. In the bloodjohned khanates
hear uzis thundressing as calamiterror’s
drearmament spreads heavy losses. Their cry:
art is efflorescence of capital, no more.
In submachinese deafending the footclog’s
secretacy to greenstrike the flowers
each fear handles its arms, swings warhammers
to make the sky stop then setfeet into
Noigandres and bladestorm the foodreserves.
The black-helmeted 6th foot charges into
the teeth of danger, it’s said: they are filled
not only with food, but bleed-heavy combat,
performating feasts of legs, as if the sky
uncracks, singing within the west of sign,
polpoet, to innovate is to destroy
the words fall wrong, cutting-edge is
consumption, avant eats before it
the wounded queue here pipe songs
ground-to-air the arithmetic militants
will notwithstand the flamethrow
dragoon the burndown barracks horde out
of foxholes in harm’s deployment
press on to their own desert to embed
the firearmed geometers who pincer-move
towards the reader with a lesion from
warring clans pipedowning their clasts. Who
crooked the fleshclad wave, the fields of Mars
are drowned, grass is flesh, setaside at sea-
end is sickled and cycled. Art is dead.

Giles Goodland