Four Minutes and Thirty-Three Seconds of John Cage
All the great mystics reach beyond words
to the beauty and terror of blackberries
to the shore of the sun, its
dazzling sizzle.
Or they chant a syllable so senseless
it flies untethered as an orange angel
and falls in a gutter flooded with moon.
Packed like a pimiento in his olive
Alfa Romeo, John Cage has nothing to say
and says it parked in the center of an intersection
smacking his lips over blackberries
while everyone else honks full-throttle,
swearing, Up yours with their hairy fingers.
Now John exhales in iambic pentameter.