Yogi Berra

Wage War

I would see the city as a mutant among the wonders of the world. Its
chimmneys polluting the air. Its roots poisoning the earth. Its
tentacles setting one man against another and strangling them both in
their hopeless contest. I would map the cities' highways and tunnels and
bridges, its subways and canals, its neighbourhoods adorned by beautiful
homes filled with priceless objects, rare libraries, and fine rooms. Its
clever networks of pipes and cables and wires under the streets. Its
Police departments and communications stations. Its hospitals, churches,
and temples. Its administrative buildings crowded with overworked
computers, telephones, and servile clerks.
Then I would wage war against this city as if it were a living body. I
would welcome the night-sister of my skin, cousin of my shadow, and have
her shelter me and help me in my battle. I would lift the steel lids
from the ????? and ????? explosives to the ????? ????
and then I would run away and hide, waiting for the thunder which would
trap, in mute telephone lines, millions of unheard words. Which would
darken rooms full of white light and fearful people.
I would wait for the midnight storm which whips the streets and blurs
all shapes and I would hold my knife against the back of a doorman,
yawning in his gold braided uniform, and force him to lead me upstairs
where I would plunge my knifs into his body. I would visit the rich, and
the comfortable, and the un-aware, and their last screams would
suffocate in their ornate carpets, or tapestries and ???? ?????. Their
dead bodies pinned down by broken statues would be gazed upon by slashed
family portraits. Then I would run to the highways and speedways that
surge forward towards the city. I would have with me bags full of bent
nails to empty on the asphalt. I would wait for the dawn to see cars,
trucks, buses approaching at great speed and hear the bursting of their
tyres, the screech of their wheels, the thunder of their steel bodies
suddenly ???? ???? as they crash into each other, like wine glasses
pushed off a table. And in the morning I would go to sleep, smiling in