April showers
bring with them atomic flowers,
strewn about Elena’s hair,
her forest painted
the colors of Red Square.
Children play in the fun zone
where radiation particles
are active and windblown,
forming flakes on rosy cheeks,
floating down toxic creeks.
The smell of graphite burning in a kiln
makes the nostrils flare,
what’s this metallic taste in the air?

Clouds drift over weddings
and Ferris wheels,
rain falls black and surreal.
Mother goes about her routine
humming dirges like a godless fiend.
36 hours to figure the science,
past time to evacuate
a city in brisk silence.
Brides scream and children cry,
from the fall-out they mummify.
Pripyat’s dying metropolis
they euthanize and lay to rest
in a sarcophagus.

And atop her shallow grave,
deep within the exclusion zone,
sit the sickened stems
and decaying fragrance
of nuclear flora over bone.
Here in the jackal's sanctum,
a capsule car on the lifeless
pleasure wheel
swings like a pendulum,
over a wooded lot with not a soul in sight,
only fresh morbid blooms
that glow in the night.

Я вас любил ("I Loved You")
by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I loved you ... perhaps I love you still ...
perhaps for a while such emotions may remain.
But please don’t let my feelings trouble you;
I do not wish to cause you further pain.

I loved you ... thus the hopelessness I knew ...
The jealousy, the diffidence, the pain
resulted in two hearts so wholly true
the gods might grant us leave to love again.

Keywords/Tags: Russia, Russian, Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, modern English translation, regret, remorse

Candles are lit.
The family gathered.
The son brought downstairs, eyes covered.

Make a wish my son.
I wish..
I wish, the Russians were gone.

Confused? This is not birthday party.
This is Russian airstrikes dropped down daily.

Syria is my home.
A tyrant on the throne..

Boris and Natasha's minds were awhirl
As the Russia probe facts did unfurl
Let's end the confusion
There was no collusion
Was fake news of moose and of squirrel

We were ordered by military law

To elope, even before our boat had hit the shore

The bullets knocked us about, thats for sure

Dead cobbers scattered adrift, from the infantrys 1st corp

Now some mates from my own platoon, 1, 2, 3 now 4

Nobody should ever have to witness such gore

Did not matter if you were rich or poor

You were just a target, in this almighty war

If the politicians demanded, they would easily send more

Finally, the west encircled the mad beast, with a rambunctious roar

But they let the Reds go forth, who savaged all the women, like a wild boar

What was the main aim and what was the true meaning, deep down at its core, for this unholy friggin’ war?

Dostoevsky dreams
And Pushkin lines
And rhymes...
Like Bolshevik bullets
Tear into me
Seething
Hot sleep!

Dead Tsars and Anastasia
Mean nothing to me
But I miss them
Sometimes...

Aristocratic nonsense
But tiaras are pretty
With diamonds shining
In a Russian night

As kulaks die
The diamonds glitter
A worthy reminder
Of a beautiful time

When debutantes danced
And the little Tsarina

Could dream in peace

On this dark day, this evil day, this day
In a railway carriage on a branch line
Three hundred years of civilization
And millions of lives, three generations
Were signed away with a few penned words
In a railway carriage on a branch line
On this dark day, this evil day, this day




(2 March 1917 O.S.)