Persecutions

In all the vast Metropolis of Circles       you are given a pass       for one building
after waiting in a line-up        that stretches from Ugolino’s Meat Shop to
Bertrand’s Military Gear.        While others receive

promised tracts of Paradise    relaxing sabbaticals in Purgatory        you
are glad (you tell yourself)     to be allotted one cold cell         deep
in The Tower of Hunger.

Only when you finally arrive at the address (roughly scribbled on a shred of parchment)
you realise           there is no door into this establishment           just a million
tiny windows.      In the last light before the Apocalypse              you stand

beneath these walls          noting the MCXML carved into the closest sill
recalling childhood’s superhero dreams.