Dropped into perestroika events
and I don’t really know myself.
I talk differently than my driving desires
I’m a less apt projection of who I want to be.
I can honestly say sometimes I might be the original
but that’s a last resort in boring places.
Someone once had a quote
about how it’s foolish to know yourself.
But I get so **** scared.
Nothing to hold.
Not even a floor for my shoes.
Not even sure what shoes best suit me.
I’m free to make this soul go anywhere,
Yes, Mr. Voltaire, ****** too free.
Mr. Holy Roller says Jesus already came with his plow truck
and paved a way for me.
But which ways did he pave,
God, where will it all lead?
God, which way is best for me?
Still I might not be supposed to know myself,
But The Self
that we all share.
You and me babe.
and that dog and that deer
and that grass and that car
and that lamp post.
All the same.
All the universe’s
and all the other universes’ weight on my head
that keeps being ****** into a vortex
in between where everything’s all the same goop.
All the same stuff. What am I doing living with it?
******.

“Whoever observes himself arrests his own development. A caterpillar who wanted to know itself would never become a butterfly.” -Andre Gide

Hobbit those characters who lived
within the realm
of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
as far removed as
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
upon squelched cusp of progressivism,
now most likely
experience bitterness at the autocracy
of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

Impossible mission to believe
amidst audacity, atrocity, egocentricity,
ferocity, mendacity, rapacity, et cetera
former KGB intelligence officer currently
serving as President of Russia
total mortal kombat of Ukraine did conceive
author of these words doth grieve
needless wanton death and destruction
analogous to volcano that lays waste
to innocent lives indiscriminately
spews forth horror as fiery lava
belches forth instantaneously
devastating explosions heave
leveling great swaths landscape
Gaia retching liquid rock
rendering utter wasteland
entombed survivors cannot leave.

The older generation
most likely experienced taste of democracy
(or the closest approximation thereof)
as I (am American baby boomer)
felt wowed by revolutionary changes,
when Ronald Reagan
occupied the White House.

Permafrost of the cold war thawed
when Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
(a Russian: born 2 March 1931)
ranked as salutary Soviet statesman.

As eighth leader of Soviet Union,
he rang successful posts as follows:
General Secretary of Communist Party
Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991.

He headed country of sprawling Soviet state
from 1988 until 1991
Chairman of Presidium of Supreme Soviet
from 1988 to 1989,
Chairman of Supreme Soviet from 1989 to 1990,
and President of Soviet Union from 1990 to 1991.

Gorbachev was born in Stavropol Krai
into a peasant Ukrainian–Russian family knoll high
in his teens, operated combine harvesters
on collective farms as strapping guy.

He graduated from Moscow State University
in 1955 with a degree in law.

While at university, he joined Communist Party,
and soon became jaw
burr walk key i.e. very active mouthpiece per se.
In 1970, his near flawless
dossier a boon asper getting appointed
First Party Secretary drawing
salary of Stavropol Regional Committee,
First Secretary as “Chaw”

Bach ca qua Supreme Soviet in 1974,
and appointed as member of Politburo in 1979.

Within three years after death of Soviet leader
Leonid Brezhnev, following brief "interregna"
of Andropov and Chernenko, Gorbachev
elected general secretary chief
by Politburo in 1985.

Before reaching said post,
his bona fides occasioned bill leaf
As top dog name-dropped
in Western newspapers
as a likely next leader and reef
furred as barrier to manage
younger generation at top level.

Gorbachev's policies of glasnost ("openness")
and perestroika ("restructuring") and
his reorientation of Soviet
strategic aims contributed
to end Cold War.

Under a rustling brand
new program, the role
of Communist Party in governing
the state was removed demand
did via the constitution,
which inadvertently led to crisis-level
political instability fanned
surge of regional nationalist
and anti-communist activism
culminating in dissolution hand
of Soviet Union. Gorbachev
later expressed regret
for failure to save USSR, Mother land
though he insisted his policies not failures,
but rather vitally necessary reforms, miss man
aged, sabotaged and exploited by opportunists.

He was awarded the Otto Hahn
Peace Medal in 1989,
the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990
and Harvey Prize in 1992, plus un-cease
sing honorary doctorates from various universities.

In September 2008, Gorbachev vis
a vis, and business oligarch Alexander Lebedev
announced formation of Independent
Democratic Party of Russia,
and in May 2009 Gorbachev
announced that launch meant
to be imminent.

This third attempt Gorbachev
sought to establish a political party, rent
asunder from disparate competitors started
Social Democratic Party of Russia in tent
toward legitimacy dated 2001,
and Union of Social Democrats
in 2007 voice of the people to vent.

Hobbit those characters who lived
within the realm
of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
as far removed as
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
upon squelched cusp of progressivism,
now most likely
experience bitterness at the autocracy
of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

Permafrost of the cold war thawed
when Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
(a Russian: born 2 March 1931)
ranked as salutary Soviet statesman.

As eighth leader of Soviet Union,
he rang successful posts as follows:
General Secretary of Communist Party
Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991.

He headed country of sprawling Soviet state
from 1988 until 1991
Chairman of Presidium of Supreme Soviet
from 1988 to 1989,
Chairman of Supreme Soviet from 1989 to 1990,
and President of Soviet Union from 1990 to 1991.

Gorbachev was born in Stavropol Krai
into a peasant Ukrainian–Russian family knoll high
in his teens, operated combine harvesters
on collective farms as strapping guy.

He graduated from Moscow State University
in 1955 with a degree in law.

While at university, he joined Communist Party,
and soon became jaw
burr walk key i.e. very active mouthpiece per se.

In 1970, his near flawless
dossier a boon asper getting appointed
First Party Secretary drawing
salary of Stavropol Regional Committee,
First Secretary as “Chaw”

Bach ca qua Supreme Soviet in 1974,
and appointed as member of Politburo in 1979.

Within three years after death of Soviet leader
Leonid Brezhnev, following brief "interregna"
of Andropov and Chernenko, Gorbachev
elected general secretary chief
by Politburo in 1985.

Before reaching said post,
his bona fides occasioned bill leaf
As top dog name-dropped
in Western newspapers
as a likely next leader and reef
furred as barrier to manage
younger generation at top level.

Gorbachev's policies of glasnost ("openness")
and perestroika ("restructuring") and
his reorientation of Soviet
strategic aims contributed
to end Cold War.

Under a rustling brand
new program, the role
of Communist Party in governing
the state was removed demand
did via the constitution,
which inadvertently led to crisis-level
political instability fanned
surge of regional nationalist
and anti-communist activism
culminating in dissolution hand
of Soviet Union. Gorbachev
later expressed regret
for failure to save USSR, Mother land
though he insisted his policies not failures,
but rather vitally necessary reforms, miss man
aged, sabotaged and exploited by opportunists.

He was awarded the Otto Hahn
Peace Medal in 1989,
the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990
and Harvey Prize in 1992, plus un-cease
sing honorary doctorates from various universities.

In September 2008, Gorbachev vis
a vis, and business oligarch Alexander Lebedev
announced formation of Independent
Democratic Party of Russia,
and in May 2009 Gorbachev
announced that launch meant
to be imminent.

This third attempt Gorbachev
sought to establish a political party, rent
asunder from disparate competitors started
Social Democratic Party of Russia in tent
toward legitimacy dated 2001,
and Union of Social Democrats
in 2007 voice of the people to vent.

I've seen people who claim
not to suffer
cry in hotel bathrooms.
To be born without a heart
is merely practical, not fulfilling.

Those who suffer
have an eye for suffering.

As I've gotten older
I've come to understand
life is an exchange;
you lose something,
you get something.

That's a simple deal,
but no one tells you what to do
when something gets back.

Now you're stuck with an old friend
while you're a new you.
You love him,
but you can't stand him.

Guess I'm sorry for growing up.

But **** it,
give me my ghosts
and let them haunt me.
I'm sick and tired of numbing pain.

A gun only stops shooting when you stop reloading it.
Otherwise you've got generational trauma.

**** people who use their pain
as an excuse to hurt someone else.
**** saying pain made you who you are.
Those who glorify pain haven't healed from it.

We're all in a rush
to be disqualified from being human.
I envy those who are comfortable
with that position.
At least they've found something to hold onto.

Guess the rest of use just have to start over.
Call it a Perestroika of the heart,
call it tearing down the walls,
or don't call it anything.

Only thing that matters is to stop the bullet.

I leave you in the middle of town
I hope you have a map
to get back to the bus station

Over a cider in the posh end of town
which probably cost us both more
than we could afford

after our afternoon's talk of Tolstoy
& a shared love of Enid Blyton
& musicians we both loved

we talked of what the current government
was doing to the British poor
& you told me of your own

straightened circumstances
as a child, relying on food parcels
from the Church to stay alive

& I told you how in the Soviet Union
& during the Perestroika
there was never any food in the shops

for anyone & how my mother
queued for hours to get a single pint of milk
not knowing if she'd get it

& how our life changed
when we came here
for the better

we come from different worlds,
each has had their problems
this & Poetry is what connects us.

to note, i am always eager to become
a sponge at the end of the day,
having soaked up anything of interest
throughout the day, to later squeeze it
out onto a page with words,
four points of consideration,
and the obvious fifth unrelated to yesterday
through to today: sunsets in march.

1. the documentary film
        cyborgs among us -
   and my, what a dull etymological
study...
            cipher- or even psy-
                        psi-? that's stretching it...

2. making dinner today, schnitzel
    with home made fries,
    plus two salads,
       grated apple and carrot
         with sour cream and garnished
to taste, the other being blanched
   leak with a mix of mayo and sour
cream, opening the richness of the mayo
with white vinegar, sugar to taste...

   the anatomy of a poached chicken
corpus that was used to make a nice chicken
broth, soup, with added carrots, an onion,
leak, root parsley...
        what is the most tender meat on a chicken?
answer? the neck.

3. if you're not serious about drinking
on any said day, don't begin with a monkey,
i.e. 100ml of any 40% alcohol, esp polish
*****, unless if course you want to wake
up an unsatiated  monster
   who will rob the ******* drinking cabinet
and sit in minus 6 degrees at night
on a balcony blinking at the moon
    writing berserker poetry wishing
it was (i.e. the beast, high on shroom) -
ease into a soft pouch of Bailey's liquor
and you'll be fine...

4. never mind the cyborgs,
   the mutants, the anomalies are already here,
well, seeing what the end result will actually
be for the average boy genius,
tattoos, piercings, cyber-punk
    and implant magnets,
    not exactly the upper tier of the mad engineer
and his special guinea pig at the cyber Olympics,
after all, to compete is not to distribute,
and to not distribute is to face that music
and speak of the middle men of power
who already have the high end and the low
end of th robotics enterprise,
    thanks to the cyber punks in the dingy
caves, cyber-hacking templates for
those in the higher and highest stratum
of the movement...

the mutants? 20 / 19 is the magic number,
    from the onset of chernobyll and my birthday...
if the Scandinavians had a whiff of the fallout
and we're talking atomic winds...
    and my great grandmother telling me that
as the breeze past the were lanes in the trees
interchangeable autumn and spring,
  couples of metres of autumn, then spring,
autumn, spring... in one giant bogus farce...

     сорок город... or rather city no. 40...
the  facilities, built by the soviets
in retaliation to the amrican first drop...
    for every worker of the facility
  and agent was ascribed to monitor their every move,
city no. 40 was not like your romance with
the Greek city-state, it was deemed a closed
city (an official term), people could leave it
and come back, but no one could
go in without military planning,
     city no. 40 was revealed after
Perestroika as ozoirsk, prior to residents
of city no. 40 had to lie that they lived
in cheladin on Lenin st.,
    the city itself? claim to fame as providing
Litvinenko plutonium tea...
             beneath it, and beside it,
death like, a bed lined with 30 tonnes of
plutonium waste, and 50 tonnes of
weapon-grade plutonium...
         the Маяк incident of 1957...
nadezdha kupetova added just the right
of glamour to the streets of Paris...
another worthwhile mention
of closed cities around the world,
similar to city no. 40...
   well? what a nice bedtime story they
tell you, about the city of Mercury, Nevada,
otherwise known as, area 51...
    i guess it's better talking about aliens
than talking about what's behind this curtain
lies... area 51, Mercury, Nevada, has as much
to do with aliens as Charlie Chaplin has to
to do with ******, because it's not as easy
as pointing out that ****** actually borrowed
Charlie's moustache.

nearing two months in,
grandfather taking his Alzheimer
pills and other rainbow potions,
almost zombified in the morning,
a high spell mid afternoon,
and then back into dossing...
a stuck memory machine,
a mind on the verge of placebo
when it should be ingested
pure reason...

                     or perhaps the result
of early retirement,
and the aftershocks of
Perestroika in the satellite states
of the Warsaw pact...
                  slower than death he sits
almost nonchalant,
but mostly vague,
        even though he's clinging to
a razor blade and drowning,
each time i ask him to take a morning
walk his stubborn leftovers
are adamant on growing
     a mark from lying in bed for
the majority of the day...

             yet it's still down to 5 minutes
for a crossword puzzle,
   evidently clinging to the minimum
of abstract and fiddly can allow
this, ******* circus of memory...
          even i am a memory censor,
have about 10 memories i am adamant
on keeping...

        the rest can go to hell,
each and every time i recall one of them
I have to allocate it chronology,
mind you: the ten are so far apart
and in a variety of places,
that it doesn't exactly become problematic.
only two days ago, somewhere
there was an Saturday, apparently,
the typical **** fest of drinking
skunking and broken heart sulking,
and all other manner of politics imaginable
under the sun...

   yet i was sitting in a home with
two old people...
       and on the odd occasion having
a trivial argument with one them,
because she knew mira kubasińska
and before going to bed she was infuriated
by an article...
        in the tabloid press:

- like hell, her parents didn't have
musical talents, she slept in hay thrown
on the bare floor, her father sold
wicker chairs and had a hunchback...

the ferocious venom of jealousy,
even in old age, persists...
   a man might as well have said:
stop beating about the *******
and get to the point: the woman's dead...

- grandma, go to bed, you're seeing
a Mongol...

      eyes like Buddha-squints and already
walking in sleep with a distant lullaby...

but today i couldn't let her off,
yes, Edinburgh is the capital of the Scots,
no, it doesn't matter if Abba sang
about Glasgow and touring loneliness
and fatigue in super trouper...

but she early tried to make spaghetti
from my mind when i played her
PRL blues, breakout's
     kiedy byłem małym chłopcem
from the debut:

- did you know that's the young nalepa
    and his father?
- you must have been reading tabloids
as bad as the ones i'm reading,
that's nalepa and his son he had with
mira kubasińska...
- grandma, that's the debut album,
   when breakout was a band as good
as peter green's Fleetwood Mac...
   it's the young nalepa with his father!

I didn't win the argument...
    after a while I changed the subject
cooling the "problem"
        by talking about the weather...

and then there are days spent with
old people where the mortal fact is
unnerving, but not in a way that might
inject ambition into you,
to take chances with some untrodden
secret avenue and spontaneous
reawakening in mid-life...
              a metaphor of early Alzheimer's:
an old man's donkey stubbornness,
the unnerving fact and the joke
of the view from the balcony:
right at a graveyard...

    the unnerving mortal fact,
or rather, if you manage to find an honest
old ****: old people ask the same questions
as children might,
       yet they ask the exhausted
question, rather than the annoying
question...
yet still the persistent
      construction of a sieving process
of teasing knowledge while mingling
it with ignorance...
        
      no man can say he doesn't sieve through
this life in some regard of keeping
it: intact...
                hard to say the exhausted inheritence
of taking certain things for granted,
not having inspiration from a blank,
canvas...
             but there is a sieving process...
like any beautiful woman
seen by the shallows of the eye...
     I beheld: but I didn't reside long enough
to be, an adamant admirer,
a muse exhauster...
                      and gallows keeper of:
seeking responsibility outside the mundane...

it's not an evil ignorance, hardly a forced
denial,
             and nature is to proud for us
to shield ourselves with doubt...
            as seen in an old man...
                       however minute the deterioration
and his attempts to escape by
memor bombardment,
   like some secular confession otherwise
attributed to a priest...
            
      if there is truly any beauty in this world,
man can only fathom it by acting out
a guise of placebo ignorance,
          not some dumb luck of a *******
celestial tourist...
                         yet at the same time not
perpetually awe-stricken
    pulverised by a seeking question...

/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

( a truly unnecessary post scriptum
concerning the zeitgeist

      we'd all go mad if suddenly pronouns
became transcendental toward
the current gender neutrality vogue,
e.g.
   ? walked up to a mirror,
    ? peered in,
          in a split second, ? realised
that what stood before ? was not
      ?, but at the same time also ?,
in a reflex split second: ? stood entombed
in a siamese union with ? own
reflection, as ?!...
       otherwise ? would certainly
be walking about, hotheaded
and bore-snout-hot-phlegm-oozing
mirror shard's worth of !         )

oh yeah,  because everyone was so
hot off the mark to read
Samuel Beckett's watt...
      **** knows why the national
pride brigade cites the unread Ulysses.

what sort of punishment is this?
i beg to differ
should anyone insinuate otherwise:
that is isn't some sort of macabre
way of polishing shoes...
two days strapped to the bed...
unable to eat all too able to sleep...
did this torture arrive while
Taylor Swift's army scrutinized
the internet for the comments
and came with the idea
that her concerts were somehow
safe spaces for all:
how as the security team we didn't
receive bomb threats otherwise
****** frustrations and ****** deviations
how there wasn't a male
******* in the vomitory and then
exposing himself
because the ratio of male to female
toilets was so unaccommodating
and how the women would
take advantage and just simply
walk into the male toilets unannounced
and... i assume: or... i even hope
that they wouldn't be caught *******
into the urinals...
that would really be a Duchamp
moment of how to treat the rainbow
brigade of confused sexuality...
i wish i was drunk a little more:
it's not Edie is giving me heartache
because i'd rather do my driving license
on Kauai than spend another 2 or 3 weeks
on this godforsaken continent...
imagine melancholy
imagine lethargy
and a sloth that's a catharsis...
this is me: at my best estimation:
resetting...
i don't know what for...
but i'm in no way in control: able...
to summon a will to live...
if i'll be able to bounce from this
i'll be remotely happy...
but so much lies so much undercurrent
narratives
how this one, elder gentleman
insinuated:
and they called me obtuse...
for whatever reason... this Gen Z
candy can crush...
         candy can crush...
        cancan dancers aged 14 new age
brave new world feminism
and into the mix thirsty men from
Arabia: these female dissonance this
losing my plot and my think
it's only, now, sinking in...
                  but... if i allow myself
to concentrate on words:
because i'm not writing this from an abode
of ****** frustration, constipation blah blah...
a genuine concern:
how long do these women "think"
they can pull off the walk-around
pithy for a harem...
           pithy for a harem...
i actually had to look up the meaning
of the word: pithy...
personally? i think it's adequate...
if you think about it...
given i've seen so much white flesh
and it felt like an epileptic fit
with strobe lighting to boot...
and it just is... somehow: not annoying?
somehow there isn't an overload
of sensation, stimulation...
the way these women unabashedly just
parade a faking of innocence
and then groom the younger siblings
into committing the same sin
of over-exposing males to their finicky
travesty?
seriously, seriously:
i'm paying the price of working
security at a Taylor Swift concert...
i usually drink but this is not
me dealing with the afterthought
of drinking too much:
i've seen too much...
i just walked into hell...
i walked into hell 7 ******* times...
and Islam is not going to just
justify to me that
a just reward is 72 virgins waiting for me
as i try to persuade the minds
of people: i'm about to ****...
to tell me: Allah is the highest theonym
because Allah is not the highest theonym:
YHWH is... the cyclops...
                     Y
                H       H
                     W

the Ukrainian girl i was working
with when i was sexually harassed:
oh we talked about history, Perestroika...
cannibalism under starvation conditions...
     and Polish, L'viv...
                                  NIC and NIĆ
(nothing and thread)
              clearly... she started cackling
like a magpie and a Babayaga all the same...
thus the touching pointers of each
letter in the theonym

but now i'm going to concentrate on what
i concentrated with her, dear, Victoria,
i hope you don't mind...

/   Ъъ Ъ ъ твёрдый знак
'hard sign'
[ˈtvʲɵrdɨj znak] ⓘ еръ
[jer] [∅] ʺ silent, prevents palatalization of the preceding consonant объект obyékt
"object" – U+042A / U+044A
Ыы Ы ы ы
[ɨ] еры
[jɪˈrɨ] [ɨ] y General American roses (rough equivalent) ты ty
"you" – U+042B / U+044B
Ьь    /

                              ЪЫЬ

because i dated a girl from St Petersburg
and she was into literature
and a daughter of a timber oligarch from
Siberia and when
i met her grandmother she told me
it was her mother
and when i met her mother she told me
it was her sister
and when i met her father
she forgot to tell me her sister was,
her mother was, married to him...

i can get ****** up on philosophy and drinking:
but women... they get off on
something, completely: else...
so me going to a brothel
was kind of sobering...
psychiatrists, priests, prostitutes...
the sacred trinity of who you talk to:
don't trust me: i'm the fourth wheel
in the machinery: i can be truthful but
i can also be flamboyant: poetry is thus...
Muhammad was right to distrust us...
but that was a time long before
journalism came along...
now we're the lesser evil...
i don't sing pretty i don't rhyme...
but apparently the Quran is...
wait... what is it?
supposedly the envy of poets?
the Quran is a poem: like no other?
Gabriel suggested that?
                 wow!            spectacular!

or maybe the past 2 days i've been tortured
because i made an honest critique of:
so the Pakistanis say they
are the purest of races...
yet... they end up... ******* on the toilet seat
in a public toilet:
for me... to later imagine...
tapeworms of the microcosm
able to travel through *****
and osmosis
into my buttocks... to later become
dead white blood cells of Beelzebub's kiss
as i squeezed them out from my face...
is that... it?!
and this whole jumping of the queue
when signing out:
so i did say: ******:
is this concept of queue something
too metaphysical for you to comprehend?
are we standing here for: ******* alms?!
so what, the, ****?!
clearly we're not going to get along
any more...
i'm going to bail or i'm going to
zero myself out of this whole life...
pattern: just jumbling words right now...
i keep my sanity with my cat...
testing: if i can go with 2 days of not
eating properly: they can survive
with me neglecting them
should this aura of grey and miserableness
not lift me from my slumber...
because it's clarifying in its devastation
of immobilizing me...
i have been... immobilized...

so what? i can breathe but i can't speak:
is this the Taylor Swift critique of getting
sexually harassed or is this me telling
the ******* UMMAH
that your puritans are retards and
**** on toilet seats in public?!
you *****... you skivvy ***** *******...
i know you...
you're ******* ***** squalor seminal
indentations of what the Europeans
thought of the Jews in the 20th century...
we have to deal with these new incursion
of bad hygiene: once more?!
oh please... justify your singing the Surah
to the ******* stones...
you ***** ugly, *******...
cousin-******* 6th finger short on each hand!

p.s. i hope you do realize:
what's happening in Ukraine right now?
that's called target practice...
my own people are stupid
i don't even know why Nietzsche would
envy being a ******...
oh sure sure: i'm not hearing anything
concerning the French of the Slavic realm...
but sooner the Slavs...
succumb to this ****** Germanic thinking
that's not even remotely considerate
of...               the Slavs would sooner wage
war with each other than allow
any parasitical thinking into their realm...
this woke ******* monstrosity
without god, this hybrid fuckery of anti-vitality!

This silent pen,
This flowing aromatic
This spare confessional,
This alchemy of light.

And you light a cigarette,
Prowl the room like a leopard.
And the trains run east to west,
And somehow this comforts you
On the way to your other gig.
And the sun roars against the window,
Your face,
Gliding up the road.
And you think of Yeats,
Shelly, the Shaw Of Iran,
Perestroika, Persian rugs,
Brahms And bikinis,
And you know your friends,
Watch your enemies,
Keep a checklist,
Forget the checklist
As the woman with the legs
Crosses against the light.

And the lights come up,
The movie's ended.
The streetlights shine in the mist.
You walk to your car,
And rain dots the windshield
As cars hiss up the street.