A COUPLE IN A ROOM

They’re in a room.

And not just any room.

By their very presence,

it’s the room they are in.

Maybe it’s morning.

Or evening. Or dark out.

Or light. Or a certain day

or month. A particular year.

But the room could care less.

Only within matters.

Only each other.

And nothing of anything else.

They huddle. They hold

each other. They’re the

room’s center of power.

They tell it what to do.

            The room obeys

            admirably.

REVOLVING

Death was always a revolver, lying around,

waiting for someone to pull the trigger.

Every chamber was empty but one.

There were potential shooters everywhere.

If they really wanted to kill you,

there was nothing you could do to stop them.

The news was more about knives.

Little jabs from the stories

of what happened to others,

whether it was war or disaster

or local or even family.

For some reason, the blades,

sharp as they were,

couldn’t stab deep enough

to cause the ultimate damage.

You wore the scars, if not proudly,

then at least with deference.

As you grew older,

you didn’t fear that pistol as much.

There’d been shots fired.

But most missed.

A few bullets caused mere flesh wounds.

But the aim was improving.

And your body felt more and more like a target.

The sympathies of others didn’t help.

Sure, they stepped into the line of fire for a moment

but, at the sound of the bang,

they fell away,

left you exposed,

just the way you wanted it.

In the end,

you were so sore and tired and pain-wrecked,

you picked up that revolver yourself,

fired away until a bullet found its mark.

Come morning,

they found you in your bed.

Dead of old age was the conclusion.

But dead of what it takes to die

was the truth.

PAWN

He didn’t wake up one morning

and say to himself, “Yeah that’s me.

I’m the runt of the chessboard.”

He’d been small and powerless as a baby

The years hadn’t changed the situation.

He had his own house — more of a crib

really – with a mortgage looking over it.

And a wife and two kids to share

in his lowly status:

Plus extended family — a hierarchy

that forever doomed  him to a bottom rung.

And a job that shunted him this way,

that way — atypical pawn – of limited

movement, potential, disposal,

and no chance of being a king.

The city with its. roads, its traffic signs,

its cops, its bankers,

only existed so as to tell him what to do.

He attended church to confirm his insignificance.

And played cards with his buddies

though even the winners didn’t really win.

Alcohol found him an easy mark.

So did reality TV.

And then-the doctor’s found

cancer in his brain —

inoperable and in charge.

THE SUN’S PROXY

So little of the sun’s rays

make it to the attic window

and the subsequent shine

does no more than

illuminate some flies,

living and dead.

The past lives here

so it’s only right

that brightness look elsewhere

for its truth

and that a pervading dimness

tends to the fully-packed cardboard boxes,

the over-stuffed metal trunk.

I come up here with a flashlight,

so that I control memory’s narrative,

glossy up an ancient photograph

yet leave a wedding dress in shadow,

glimmer off a bronze baby shoe

but let sleeping love-letters lie.

In this cramped space,

I am the sun,

uncaring of a jigsaw puzzle

but stopping to polish up

a favorite model MG sports car,

shunning school report cards

while bringing out the colors

in a far-too-small-for-me

hand-painted psychedelic shirt.

The true sun

must concern itself

with the limited world of insects.

In low-ceilinged storage space,

the life I’ve lived

revolves around me.

TO BE WHAT THEY’RE LOOKING FOR

A beautiful beach day,

perfect for the tan that will give me

that G Q look just in time

for Miss Right – the phantom lady.

Sea breeze is blowing,

my air’s full of sand

and smells like salt –

hope that doesn’t chase away this woman

who’s not about to show up anyhow.

I tried hawking myself

in the nighttime,

but neon always focused

on my worst side

and shadows had their own dark things

to say about my character.

I’m a compendium

of fidgeting theories,

in constant search for that holy grail –

my best aspect.

What if that special someone prefers

natural off-white to bronze?

And I’m not so muscular.

Is my bathing suit just being honest

or is it asking for trouble?

I could dress in a suit

and look as square as six Salvation Army generals.

Or shop where the kids shop

and come off as a survivor of a time-machine crackup.

Some things they say should be left to chemistry.

So ultra violet rays contribute to oxidative stress,

melanocytes produce eumelanin.

Really, I’m doing all I can.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Tenth Muse. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and  “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Birmingham Arts Journal, La Presa and Shot Glass Journal.

Pink and black and white poster for a Day of the Dead festival in Italy. Includes yellow and pink flowers, candles, and a skull with a floral wreath.

DEAD CELEBRATE THE LIVING’S DAY 

How happy are the nations without war

Who live in a deep dream of deceit and lies

Of obscenities and outbursts

Sheltered by witch gods

And serial killers and sorcerers

Who easily get in wherever they want

In our body and our mind

Making a fuss and causing a lot of trouble

To open their eyes and eat them if they can

To those who die in the nations at war

Applauded in Europe and America

Showing false feelings

To the humans who come in boats

And are locked up in new concentration camps.

Quietly, and slowly dancing mariachis

In a daring dream adventure

I’m going to celebrate the Dead’s Day 

A Living’s Day to me,  in Italy

From October 27 to November 3

Without knowing if in Bergamo, Via Daste e Spalenga

In Cremona, Via Gioconda

Peeking at the place where Da Vinci is dead

With a tasting of bones and heads of Catrinas

Of bread of the dead, and not blessed bread

In Lucca, Villa Gori, Via della Misericordia

In Rozzano (Milan), Fattoria S. Giuda, Via Giuseppe di Vittorio

In Milan, Piazza della Scala a Piazza Castello

In Rome, Largo Venue, Via Biordo Michelotti

In Rovigo, Via Parenzo

In Turin, C.so Casale

Or in Verona, Ristorante Hacienda de León, Via Boschi

Where the dead born in wars

Peek at the place where the altars are of the living

Dancing and shouting between real and artificial fireworks:

What a good meal we’re going to have together with them!

Let’s lick our lips with them

Oh, what a momento¡

How good the living taste to the dead!

Who died not in combat

But under the powerful bombs

Of men transformed into serial killers and criminals

Committing acts against humanity.

-Daniel de Culla

Broken 

We are broken from previous years

We are broken and weak

Do not come with gifts and close mind

We cannot believe words

Because was never said

We are broken

With several wounds

We try to fix ourselves

Love

Is a word

That nobody understands the same way

Love

Give

Protect

Understand

Respect

Heal

Rebirth

We are broken

Not ready to move

In this life 

Don’t play with Human hearts

The Painted Porch 

at the side of the street of Campoyong
a space between the ligneous living room
& cacophony of the outside world
I sit here in the painted porch
watching the public crowd pass by

on the glass table on the tiled deck
reads a journal on realist painter
in his oil on canvas El Kundiman
a man plays a 1930s piano
& a maiden sings a love song
now mute indeed are tongue and heart

Krebs watches townspeople walk by
yet he remains on the periphery.

(Two story stone cottage in the country near a small creek and a bunch of rocks and trees)

Enough of the news bulletin headline storming a bombardment of purgatorial catharsis aftermath of watching netflix documentary fiction broadcast television dramas of Sherlock Holmes and Margaret Atwood. Benjamin, the newbie Anglo American diplomat, is preparing a disquisition in view of being a reader of the post America future programme to be aired this eventide.

This is a frantically finicky aspect in pertinence to havoc wreckage bogging down the bay of heareth -the newfoundland of treasure wonderland and a fantastic holyland. “Honey, my dear prince of heart harken to my tidings of the latest trending breaking news. Another future glorious brighter year shall lead you to your progressive destination in acquisition of a graduate degree. What indulgences have you besotted upon ooms and gusto of twilight sitcoms? Modern Family! A revolutionary Grownish season heraldry of evolutionary Blackish !”

Readers might be awe spelled wonderment or hair splitting nirvana in the brunt of the transfiguration of maverick solipsist and transformation of iconoclastic free-spirited individualist except fanboys chrisoms canopied traits of Tom Cruise or Richard Burton. Hilary’s outspokenness from the backyard porch exterminates the brutes of mushroom in trailblazing threats of excommunication and deracination. Mary as usual couched by the bloom of Springfield is a hard nut to crack in the abyss of her arms. “Literally these flummoxing allergic gossamery flabbergast the haveli of the multi diasporic and ethnic racial community. I want to shred the colonization of these pester deterrence.  

Advisory alerts from the high commissions, embassies and consulates awakening envoys and ambassadors of the missions in the diplomatic enclave brewing a blizzard of thunderous lightning alongwith the emergency evacuation by the disaster relief, crisis management and order departure rehabilitation by marines. In this cataclysmic upheaval indigenous locale employee Bhansali interrupts, “Madam my Mehdi, he wishes to enroll himself in the medical sciences and aeronautical engineering but I admonish my financial impecuniosity.”

Ahm, see what your Lord has to chant in this verdict. Believe in yourself or else be doomed for better or worse! After all, Mehadi will be a laureate someday in upholding a fine kettle of fish. By these condolences of farewell exchange, first lady Sebastian marks her exeunt to her bed chamber.

Between the devil and the dead sea cannot alleviate the promontory of the beasts of apocalypse. At dinner’s dining hall of the banquet diplomatic channels have been catalyzing activation in sanctioning and counter sanctioning. In the meanwhile, Rossetti and Anne, their cousins from the Elysium, phone the dystopian family. “Do you feel safe amidst “The Second Coming?” That A.P. lit paper of halcyon staycation would have been mutated into a fastidious hypercriticism as a communique, memorializing the subconscious psyche of Sebastian. “Benjamin, please pick your sis-in-laws’ telephone. I’m having ants in my pocket!”

The microcosm of Westerners with pernickety elfins succumbent dwarfs the existence of a flotsam jetsam jubilee. Brandon defrosts delicacy of apple pied crumblings and sugar puffs while his midgety blood sister, Mary, a teenager by now, redeems herself with oriental and continental cuisines. Brandon and Mary are not homogenous genders in dereliction of being united by blood and divided by ambition.

However, double helix of their distinctive visages endow them the fosterage of novelistic points of view. Brandon adheres to the philosophy of Hamletesque impersonality and naivete of shepherdism and contrastingly, chroniclers would be aware that Mary shall be self chosen dowager someday: “Whether you’re dating a potential gold digger or are surrounded by friends who are perennially asking for handouts, you’ll have to shield your money from those drains…” Truly a bed of roses thorns have been cognitively implanted in these Department of the State siblings artifacts and their tactical antics.

Brandon strikes the chord John Denver’s Annie’s Song in fulbright summer camp trip to educational and cultural exchange by the Commonwealth Agency stationing of Wuthering Heights landscapes ere his homecoming to Whitmanian realms. A justification for a dystopian apocalypse cremates ashen urn of desire and demasculinizes sempiternal bonding with Anne. Might be a cascade surrealistic reading by fooling around and messing about. Mutilated flair has invaded the catastrophic cli-fi- sci-fi and whatsoever.

Death of the imagination defenestrates carnation of those camping fire nights in a fantastical New England forests- woods swapping stories, myths, legends and ballads, mountaineering in springtime, picnicking to the valleys of the countryside and quintessential seasides beaches sunbathing and sandcastle fancy, leisurely aesthetic ecstasy of chilled frosty twilight drenched downpour walk, faraway casting sandstorm in the vessels of the dunes. Destructive wild Anglo American Nights is the brunt of somnambulism in shores of both Atlantic. “Lonely deserted black stone house, broken down clinging to the grief stricken eulogizing heart”.

War fictions memoiristic chronicles of holocaust tragedy and antisemitism, islamophobia, antichrist and puritanical revolutions upsurges as the dreadest Kafkaesque macabre. Brandon couldn’t implicate the fanciful chimera in prayer for being papaless and mamaless; their talisman of one’s stony amulet and another’s frond of hair to be preserved in his diary.

What happened of altruistic Bhansali’s fostered adoption of Mehdi… and of dear darlings coal fires glowed within dilapidated and derelict, ransacked and mobbed never-to-be-forgotten moon-blanched and moon-trenched deputation and deportment…I must bear a crystal clear decision making policy in terms of boarding time machine of Schengen passport and green card unlike being a hysteric daydreaming goosebumps of demagoguery and propaganda throughout darkened attics of hurricanes.

Annie’s lost connectivity and deadening orphanhood have stricken dissonance allusive to moonbeam from lightning and frost from fire. Life cannot be lived as a furor of a harlequin romance with the closure of being happily ever after and then everybody’s death since millennial promises have to be appreciated and endorsed in this emulative field of sojourning jouney. Appropriation and credibility of being a lovelorn Heathcliff and star crossed jilting of parents’ family home and spurned fairy like damsels or mermaids like sea girls ploughed into the barren flora and fauna; volcanically erupted through the genteelness of provincial pastoralism.

Anglo-American farmers’ harvest being disruptively cyber bogged by a posthuman apocalypse harbouring to the breakfast table doesn’t provide solace in the respite of appetite. Inevitability of this wrathful tirade infiltrates the skeptic lovelorn chameleon Brandon with megalomaniac extraditioning of angelic purity from British Easter silverware filled with sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, baked beans and lamb barbecue and American Halloween food channel of pumpkin cupcakes, Haunted Graveyard Cakes, Witches Brews Pea and Bacon Chowder, and spider web chocolate fudge muffins.

Stardust oyster filled seashells coral barriers reefed seashore in and betwixt alchemical suburban villa of the castle aurora borealis, encamped within the gossamery of alumnus isles, adumbrated food banks of thought experiment. That restoration of this nostalgic spirit of crystallized dragon should be a future of tomorrow’s alternative scope of human behaviour stocked by GMOs and nuclear warfare.

Thank goodness! Good heavens! Good grief! Good gracious! I thank my lucky stars everyday for my gratitude journal, halcyon parents fosterage upheld through Benjamin and Sebastian, ordained divineness blessing my soul and the heritage drift house meadowed valle packed full of lambs and pelican pecking their own breasts and scooping fishes from lakes.

We get so lost that we ended up around Robin Hood’s barn to get to the new quarters of Bhansali. To be in Mehdi’s shoes equates that half a loaf is better than none. Bhansali like a crystal gazer envisages the aural enchantment of woods lurking tigress dim lit glare and lioness camouflaged outfit in dusky outskirts of the branches and twigs; fuel wood shed. Laconically jaguars like wolverine beasts trespassing. “Papa! Papa!” Cadaver of my emaciated dad gives me hollowed cheeks and hollowed eyes, jittery jaws and gaunt personae as if a wizarding leprechaun invades me.

Last of all, you might say, “All’s well that ends well” but for me that isn’t over because gnomes and goblins have not’ at all estranged their communion in pestering and tormenting. Housekeeping and spadework define the errands of Mehdi unlike genteelness that Brandon ascribes. However, my orphanhood has been at the helm throughout the funebrial crisis and I just don’t appreciate swapping horses in midstream through a wedlock. After all Brandon’s living death is figuratively enamored with the chivalrous quest of looking for a compassionate and empathic Jeckyl and Hyde hoor. 

(Large college lecture hall with various students)

In backstairs and back alley memoirs anticipating readers by now have garnered their repertoire of childhood phantasmal escape whence wherein sleeping beauty cloaked and daggered to be the fairy Godmother warning us not to venture into the barranca and quebrada lest we are befallen as vulnerable victims and scapegoat traps of whangdoodle.

Benjamin’s mother’s recital of Wordsworthian and Whitmanian verses is without a shred of doubt the best poetry readings ever since betide past or perhaps even decades of future. By these memorabilia talismanic afterlife to the dead resurrects the attic of sweetened chambers. That lovey dovey arm in arm of fairy tales princes’ and princesses’ legacy transporting to otherworldly cruising to Saint Martins Lane of Great Expectations.

After all, as meat is crucial for human health today proven by scientists’ zealotry, analogously eulogizes breeding for the existence of species survival by disavowal of peremptory purgatory and drowning vision of life clinging to the wreckage of veganism or celibacy. In the proclamation of straw snow field underneath potatoes and orchard apples of the verandah, Brandon’s figment of the imagination is dispelled to the heraldry of harvest season.

Nonetheless Brandon’s epiphanic visitation to the mausoleum tombstone graveyard is symbolically metamorphosed into an elegiac deluge of saturnine funebrial jaded snowlit light. Ferrying in the snow alone like a bohemian boatman of here today and gone tomorrow studio and reading Frost at Midnight…What a suicidal sacrifice for future generation breeders and caretakers of the post apocalypse in lullabying to the sweetheart angel…

And furthermore the chronicles of Mehdi would be salvageous in the caricaturization and veiled imagoes of Healthcliff like Brandon hauling into the underworld to recover his doomed Anne…

Convalescing from the chasm of the abysmal purgatory broaches a calamitous crusade with whangdoodles and wodwos. That  stupor of ethereal imaginaries would have bolstered the altar of the chapel with crematorial gothicism and mortuary macabre. Bhansali’s errands of wreathed bouquets and eglantine carnations of half-smile and half-wave farewell to the exodus of diplomatic aficionados expatriate family bruisemarked by fragmentation and shrunk clays.

It was all sea and islands now with great continents sunken like Atlantis somehow echoes the literary legend of beyond Narnia and Secret Lives and Loves. The romantic feeling of yearning and longing forever lost would be reconnected with the nadir of heaven’s apocalypse.

Feminine fantasy of mermaids and sea girls heroic voices audacity recast: “Do you think I am an automaton—–a machine without feelings and can bear to have the morsel of my bread snatched from my lips and the last drop of living water dashed from my cups? Do you think because I am poor, obscure, plain, little I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong—-I have as much soul as you have and full as much heart. And if God had gifted me some beauty and much wealth I would have made it as hard for you to leave me as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of customs, conventionalities nor even of mortal flesh, it is my soul that addresses your spirit and just as if both had passed through the grave and we stood at God’s feet equal as we are.”

Afterwards Gabriel-like manifesto reveals a treaty with reality ensconced within treasured chambered wardrobe espousal of the electrifying erudition: “All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, a light from the shadows shall spring; renewed shall be the blade that was broken, the crownless again shall be king.”

Antlers and hide from the reindeers stocking denim dungaree cast Brandon with the stance of a lion in liberating the slough of despond frontliner bizzaro harboured by bravado and stardom of ariel sylphs, country bumpkins, cowboys, philistines, pariah, aliens, minions, sextons and grave-diggers and hobgoblins. Appreciating the lives of struggling survivalists fellow comrades hailing from the heartland of Nebuchadnezzar, Brendon employed the stakeholding partisanship of Bhansali and Mehdi with the novel academy.

The world has become schizophrenic overnight, fretted by dementia and alzheimers’ diseases. With Bhansale and Mehdi as acolytes of medieval and renaissance hallmark postage to ameliorate etherization of disappearance cases. Brendon, the hero of the hour, think tank and watchdog of the dinosaur intelligentsia, frightened of his own shadow, prompts hymnal prayers to work over territorial drears.

Broadcasts and podcasts, radio dramas and televisions screens, theatres and cinemas, films and concerts, poetry readings and seminaries, banquet-halls festivities and silver platinum jubilee celebrations, meteorites and asteroids have been entrenched with arched overnice championing stewardship of aesthete’s sovereign romanticism. Grief of fear on the brink of iconoclastism plunging to despair is that hideous plaint of bleak overshadowed loathsome spectres.

Marriage has many pains but celibacy has no pleasure either. Anne and Brendan in commonwealth fulbrighters chapter wore hedgehog effect wooing and lovemaking. Brendon entraptures dame Hellenistic paragon of paramour, sneaking into the boudoir of hideaway. Audacious, forthright, strong willed child and giant mother Anne contrasts hilarious, flippant, sarcastic and cheeky Brenden—the hybridity of Englishness and Americanlike closet of shadowlands.

The vision from the sea of dawn cloistered by the labyrinthine alien islands of  antler dreams and honeysuckle bumble bees entrusts the hermitage of solitudinal reclusiveness to Brendan or Brenden: The Prince or King of The Hill of gorse. Caressing voice and mercury mind of epic heroines’ temptation drive the prince towards a game of thrones. Riverine canoeing and seafaring cruise brings back the remembrance of deer parkland. Bhansali entrusted as the deck charge d affairs unlocks the treasure chest of vaulted alleyways in the moon castle freight drift house that harbours gothic pumpkin sistine hedges banking in accord to homestead Newfoundland Science Barge laboratory propelling and shuttling amidst the sublime Iceland is a serene photographic and picturesque venue for surrealist naturalists.

A laughing stock for the hue and cry of the Hudson Valley with polar bears in predatory expeditious voyaging northwestern terrace. Bhansali came huffing and puffing at this sinisterish innuendo while brooding and boorish Chronicler has been engrossed into immersive episodic autobiographical stark black-and-white mise-en-scenes of posthumous ouster mirrored life: Englishness of the Siberian adventuring in the apocalypse of a sheer theatricality afield a fire and brimstone sermons. “My master, these emergent seal predators have auspicated your holyland to fight the mercurial dragons from edgier terrains in vengeance for forging ties with your Gentle Lake District celestial attache unicorns from the repository of inheritance.”

Mermaidian fantasy and phantasmal escapism serenades in furor of these fogged mystic cematose renegades with the spell of brouhaha from the turf to the surf.  “Heart of heart my Prince you have seen better days on the brink of the world being your oyster!”

Upon infernal snowfall Newfoundland barges with a mausoleum of snowflakes from yester halcyon nirvana and then and there Bhansali redeemed heroic the stature of dreamland quester. Along with a spanish acoustic guitar beside the portmanteau, Bhansali’s swarga booth proclamation to the receiver thus reads: “That the abode of the saints and the abode of the angels today have united in the fled of tears falling down through rolling landscapes.”

Ominous dark clouds gathering overheads afterwards of the sinistrous voice clip banging from the attache case. Brenden cannot but be lachrymose by this sinisterishly pugnacious declarative from Abraham’s bosom re-enchanting the glorification of an unpromising death tirade. Deceasement and bereavement are heartbreakingly shock- shatter thunderbolt divined by the tumult of the heavenly kingdom and thus the New Jerusalem.

Out of the blue and on the spur of the moment, Uncle Dan’s trembling voice reminds in declamatory speeches: “The Island of the Blessed and the woodland springs shall soon cater to transport you dearest sweetheart nephew to shed funebrial tears commemorating upon a flash of the Angel of Death’s decree.” I wanted to earth bury you with my heart and soul but the despondency of the wrathful cupids have enervated me.

My Iowa Creative Writing dreamland aviator fantasia backstabbed my homecoming. “Alas my lad’s disheartn’d and I’d forlorn you unobscure and inoblivious with the Bible of Dreams and the Song of Songs: “My star dust material have expanded from being a supernova explosion and collapsed to a black dwarf and it is the Beneficent Lord and Munificent Cosmologist who has ordained incalcitrant destiny and smoothed out the earth for me, so I have been atoning about in his refugee train and buffeting from the banquet feast and laterly cardiac arrest resurrects me to my Elysium Fields.”

Uncle Dan’s last words to me thusly were dimestore of treasure hunt: “I have coordinated to the telegraphic dragon slayers in espousal of a billfold vouchsafed talismanic mantra in salvaging your impetuosity and purging of your exculpation.” I won’t be shipwrecked as long as and as far as I uphold the revelations that there is none worthy of worship in Literature besides Shakespeare. Shakespeare is far exalted and above all weaknesses. Surely I wouldn’t be baptized with heretics coming into being formulation and heresies from among the wrongdoers.

Fairest flowers from the ever prolific advisory guru gifts me nightmarish goose-bumps in slumbersome sobriety of heart awakening, parting that in the end we all become stories of lion’s share engendered by heart, the nature, the dream and the imagination throughout rockets, space capsules and nuclear power stations.

P.S. Dedicating this dystopian speculative mystery science fiction to my late guardian angel and my father’s bosom friend alma mater of English Department University of Dhaka, Prof. Kamrul Hasan of Syed Abul Hossain College, Madaripur. Both my father and uncle have worked as local receptionist at the US Embassy in Dhaka. 

EURIDIQUE COME BACK ONE DAY!

(dedication to my late wife)

Eurydice, come back one day,

that my song for you does not stop

prayer to Hades touches ancient crystals,

my muse invades Diana’s verse,

I will not turn my head back

that I am not Orfe.

Eurydice, take the fairies’ journey,

come to visit and don’t stop there to see

the children have grown up. Teuta walks

your traces in Grammar,

Fly like birds in flight,

Lali stays calm like a meteor pillar,

cold winter has fallen on me

I have snow everywhere on my head.

Eurydice, I wrote you a letter,

in which paradise do you rest,

sorry i didn’t have an address

and started the journey without a visa,

no passport, no goodbye

and how do we wish this year?!

The Sun’s Tears

I do not trust

the sun’s

tears

and Lora’s

love

I do not trust

theweight

ofher word

or the longing

I have for her.

The Drawer of Forgetfulness

I locked you up

in the drawer of forgetfulness

as the crystalline water under the earth

and the crumpled writing on the gray sheet

proof of the time spent in the studio

I saw you

in the labyrinths of the faculty

where the Alphabet’s raytwinkles

your voice can be heard in each class room

in the workbook you

are piling up the memory years.

Lora 

We wander through time 

like snakes in the bushes 

Lora and I 

in the ecstasy of the painting 

I gave her Mona Lisa’s smile 

I drank water from Lora’s bosom 

and I lost myself in adolescent dreams, 

I gave Lora a life 

I gave the sky a kiss 

the sun seemed to be silent 

and left a free way to darkness 

the rainbow lightens my way 

fiery I take the stars to the bosom 

I hug the sun 

to feel its tenderness. 

Lora is silent 

and she silently speaks 

in her blonde hair 

I touch the love 

embers in the lap 

white frost 

he left traces 

Lora is asleep 

with the fiery stars 

tickling her lips 

in the corrugated crown 

the sounds of silence 

I put her crown 

and I read under her eyelids 

the novel I will write 

Lora with her bosom as virgin snow 

lures the Talmudists’ years 

Lora crystalline meteor.

WHAT TO WISH YOU TONIGHT

I am drunken with craving

of cords of your voice

I seek the canary of love

in the labyrinths of the soul

the morning messenger is not heard

nor he knits the sounds cardigan of Monastery

you, the lost one in the waves of forgetfulness.

I glaze the pictures in the museum

I doze in present time

the verb love

I conjugate in first person

Because you loved me

I track in mirative form

the time passed in lucidity

what to wish you tonight as you forgot me.

Ah, with the sweetness of the vowels

Quivered even my lake

we, like two canaries in the mountains

loosing trails in canon

me, you and the voice

tonight brings me back to nostalgia.

The whole class goes to extinguish incendiary bombs. My friend and I like it better than sitting in a cold classroom. Although I continue to study diligently, I still have the feeling that there is no need to study now. There’s a war all around! And so we benefit and do not freeze in the dimness of the classroom.

In a couple of months of participating in such operations, our class probably went around the entire Petrograd district. Bombs fell by the dozens or even hundreds. Some of them ended up in rivers, parks or squares, and they were usually not touched. Our goal was to extinguish bombs that hit houses and ended up on roofs, attics or even indoors.

It may seem strange now, but extinguishing bombs was not a very difficult task. The main thing was not to yawn and quickly cover it with sand until the “lighters” ignited everything around. It was scary at first. Some classmates said that bombs could explode and flatly refused to approach them, others boasted excessively, but at the sight of the bomb they panicked and could not move. However, over time, we all got used to it, and extinguishing “lighters” became almost as commonplace for us as homework or test papers.

Once, Igor and I and two other guys even managed to extinguish five bombs in one day. This event did not go unnoticed, and the director said that some commander would come to praise us the next day (I did not remember his last name and rank).

It was a real event for us. The blockade brought us much closer to the teachers, and even many cold and strict teachers thawed out and treated us like family. During these six months, we have already become accustomed to receiving certificates or encouragement from them and even the director, and then a person from the outside will come, and even a military one at that! All that morning, while waiting, we discussed his arrival.

– I wonder who will come to reward us, maybe Comrade Zhdanov? – one of our friends suggested.

– Why did you decide that it was him? – Igor grinned back.

– Hey, you heroes! – our ill-wisher, bully and sophomore Petka, intervened in the conversation, – What are they going to hang orders on your chest now? You’re going to walk around and shine them at the whole school, aren’t you?

– And what are you jealous of? – I asked.

– What did you say? – he started to attack me.

– Look! They’re coming! – A voice came from the hallway.

We ran out onto the stairs in a crowd. Through a small window, we clearly saw three figures in military uniforms entering the school.

– Everyone to class quickly! – Our teacher shouted.

Everyone rushed to their places. And after a couple of minutes, a short commander with a mustache, probably as big as Budyonny’s, entered the class. Our four were asked to come to the blackboard. This commander looked at us and addressed the class with a speech. He said a lot that the situation in the country and in the world is not easy, that we are fighting for a just cause and that victory will be ours, including thanks to such brave young people like us. Then he praised us and thanked us for our dedication and service to Leningrad, shook hands with everyone, handed over badges with a portrait of Lenin and performed a military greeting (saluted). To which we all replied in unison:

– Always ready!

When he left, we continued to discuss his visit and although, as some guessed, we did not receive medals or orders, this minute of communication, praise and gratitude completely replaced it and forever fixed in my memory.

6

More raids, shelling and bombing. One of them also occurred in our area. No sooner had we rejoiced at the return of the brothers, than the blockade again reminded us of itself!

That night, many houses were destroyed, but by some miracle our street was not hit. That was the first time I heard that terrible scream that night. At first I mistook it for the sound of an exploding shell or bomb, but when it was repeated, it became obvious that it had a different origin. However, a person couldn’t scream like that, a car couldn’t make such sounds, what was it? I heard it maybe five more times during the night. Something scared me in its sound, it was the sound of pain and despair, it seemed that the city itself was crying after the bombing, trying with effort to heal its wounds.

The morning was full of bustle for our family, we accompanied Ivan and Leonid to the front. Even my mother took time off before lunch for this occasion and was at home with us. But that terrible scream kept coming out of my head, and I decided to share my thoughts. My questions and assumptions were met with misunderstanding at home, and even reproaches. They were escorting their brothers and sons to the front, and I was climbing with my nonsense. Only Leonid shared my curiosity and, at parting, told me that he had heard from an upstairs neighbor a story about how an elephant from our zoo was wounded by a fragment last night, but there are no medicines and he is doomed to death.

After school, Igor and I walked around the zoo again, hoping to see something. He was very impressed by my stories. Although he did not hear these screams himself, he took my word for it and expressed hopes that specialists could come from Moscow and save the unfortunate animal. We were very worried about our elephant.

The promenade and the streets around the zoo seemed lifeless and quiet. Bare trees stuck up their branches like thorns. The dark waters of the Neva were still shackled by the ice blockade. The sidewalks, despite the spring month of March, were covered with snow. It seemed that there was not a single living soul in this world anymore, except for Igor and me.

Suddenly, I was called out. Turning around, I saw Masha dragging a sled with empty buckets. Scolding us for our idleness, she told us to immediately collect two buckets of water and take us home. Unable to refuse, I dragged the sled to the river. Igor volunteered to come with me for company.

On the way back, in this disturbing silence, we heard the cry of an elephant for the first time that day. So he was still alive! But why does he keep screaming? Is there really no way to help him? While we were standing and wondering, the elephant trumpeted again, even louder and longer.

His cry was reflected in our hearts with horror. We quickly walked away from the zoo, and he screamed over and over again, it seemed that he was chasing us, either begging for help, or warning about the agony of death, or blaming the pain that man generously gave to innocent animals.

At night, the screams of a dying elephant were heard again. I couldn’t sleep, and in order not to wake my brothers, I quietly got out of bed and walked barefoot to the window, slightly opening the window into the night darkness.

The almost indistinguishable silhouettes of the city were filled with the wild cry of death of the unfortunate animal. Perhaps this is the most terrible memory of the blockade and what I have always associated with it. That night, I also couldn’t sleep, but just stood and stared out the window for several hours in a row, hoping that my participation could ease the elephant’s torment.

The next morning, the screams stopped. It died.