After Tony Robinson and an Image by JD

Fruit in a child's hand
Fruit from a bowl
The bowl is New Orleans
The fruit cannot be put back in the bowl

What of the cash in the vaults?
Asked the asshole,
What will keep it dry?

How can I use this against my enemies?
Asked the scumbag

Asked the village idiot:
Will this stimulate growth?

Will my knuckle hurt any less?

***

Here is Tony's poem:

New Orleans is shaped like a bowl
a blue bowl is shaped like a city
I've never been to this village nor seen
an orchid up close or blown apart
sideways a strip of photography a row
of houses I've seen two men in a boat
canoeing through the flood oars up
many people are dying in a war across
the big thick-skinned navel orange
we imagine on turtles on bowls my
own sins for which I will burn
in the bowels of the earth for my girl
friend is but a child for the litany
of lies told me is sung by a woman
with a washboard standing at the levee
while the tidewaters come up home
is somewhere yonder a place ungutted
just yet and when you come you never
scream my name just a whelp just shudder
while tree branches remain exactly what
they are while I am with each touch
changing you with each meal sending
you out for someone else when
the mardi gras happens our masks
are see-through when everyone stops dying.