There was an old painting in my grandparents' attic. Neither beautiful nor ugly, it simply depicted an empty room with no figures, an old living room with an armchair, library, and fireplace ... [+]
A police van
has been
overturned
and the Burger King
on the corner
is burning,
and if you
absorb
the oily black
smoke,
willfully
breathe it in,
your heart
muscles
will seize up
and your family
desert you,
you'll forever
be marked down
in the book
as an arsonist,
a looter,
a so-called
"outside agitator,"
who made,
for a while,
this murdering
old world
to tremble.