#chernobyl
descendants of those left behind,
they found fellowship with
a singularly brutal environment,
free roaming meanderers
of a crepuscular exclusion zone,
having trekked into
the camps of liquidators
to beg for scraps,
they nosed into empty buildings
and found safe places to sleep,
stopping at Café Desyatka
for some borscht,
the guides speak only of
visitor or occupant,
there are no tourists here,
only the genetically distinct
Mar 13, 2023
Mar 13, 2023 at 10:05 AM UTC
It’s not what it looks like. It’s never what it looks like.
It’s all wrong
somewhere.
Out in the Ukrainian backwoods, Chernobyl looks
like a ghost town some thirty years later. Intact but
abandoned, vacant—hemorrhaged of humanity. Like in mass
everyone left the city to buy some milk and never returned.
Life in the standstill. Lights left on now burnt out. Meat
thawing on the counter now mold on the counter. Laundry
half folded on the bed. The bath water
ran and ran and ran until the well dried up.
You wouldn’t know that the soil and
the cats and
the dogs
were radioactive
unless you held a meter against it to measure the roentgen.
The hermit crab soft underneath its hard shell.
The mold growing around the core of the shining red apple.
The asbestos hiding in the insulation.
The lead in the paint on the crib.
Sometimes, the things that look the most fine can **** you.
Nov 19, 2020
Nov 19, 2020 at 2:22 AM UTC
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.
Aug 7, 2020
Aug 7, 2020 at 9:50 AM UTC
he is wearing lynx africa and i have a war playing out inside of me / i ring him / i tell him i have no money left / i say “i'm sorry you couldn’t **** the gay out of me” / he laughs like it’s his fault / i say it's fine and then i hang up / i think about how there will never be enough air in the atmosphere for me to breathe / my skin is infinite / i don’t have edges / it’s difficult to expect to not get touched when you live in endless skin / the air is hanging low tonight / lower than ever / i go to ring her / to tell her she is a gardener / a hospital-clean being / i don’t have her number anymore / i have to tell her about these hands / these old hands / how i think they caused chernobyl when i was someone else / i have to tell her that every word was a mistake / they were all just really bad spellings of her name.
Apr 27, 2020
Apr 27, 2020 at 6:13 AM UTC
Dead cities
Living souls
Gates keep within
As much as without
Dec 14, 2019
Dec 14, 2019 at 10:33 AM UTC
In statistics
A population
Is a set of similar events
Which pertain
To a question
Life is not so random
The question is often when (?)
Once the box is open
Stem-and-leaf scatter
Snowflakes
Assume symmetry
Burn eyes, connections
Melt skin, memory
Pollution distribution
The outlier
Survives but one day more
The median is simply
Outnumbered
Variance is valueless
Unbecoming
To a populace
Up in smoke
Count your blessings
Night comes quickly
Hard rain
Kills softly
Supplicate heaven
The top of the box
Stays hermetically
Sealed
Forever
(And a day)
Nov 4, 2019
Nov 4, 2019 at 2:32 PM UTC
four.
chernobyl on peoples mind.
mine too, pretty clear,
humanity intent
on destroying itself.
good to know!
I can put off my
my perpetual idea of getting even by suicide,
no need to cease my puffing,
waiting now until my very last moment,
cause I won’t be cheated out
of course,
by god and his central committee
of what they have being planning for me,
all my life
Jul 14, 2019
Jul 14, 2019 at 12:11 PM UTC
Every lie incurs a debt to the truth,
Oppression runs down the cheeks of our children,
For what is greatness when built on the foundations of weakness,
What is progress when it’s cost is greater than its accomplishments,
Every domino accelerates the damage,
Voices are silenced,
Honesty gets mistaken for betrayal,
The sacrifice of one can save the lives of the many,
But are you willing to be that one,
To leave a grieving wife,
For your children to grow up fatherless,
The sacrifice of the one - is a sacrifice of many,
What is the blind perseverance to never admit mistakes,
It doesn’t show strength or determination,
Only arrogant denial at the cost of a nation,
And even when the castles crumble,
And their walls lay waste in the seas of time,
Even then those responsible take no responsibility,
Even then the red blood of the innocent stains the steps of their red sanctuary,
Even then the world looks on in wonder,
What is this lunacy we call law and order,
When the orders are given by those that create the law.
I apologise for the daily desecration of my people,
I look on in hope that a brighter day will come,
And I pray that somewhere there is a justice,
For all of this.
Jul 9, 2019
Jul 9, 2019 at 2:10 AM UTC
You cannot control the power of the sun
Far less try to hide it behind lies
And reassurances that everything is fine,
While it burns into the retinas of thousands
Who thought they had jobs for life.
The sunsets just don't lie, our life giving
Star sent messages to it's progeny
Writing out the truth across the sky
Pripyat holds the secrets of the apocalypse
Now we know what happens when our world
Ends, nature carries on, regardless, unperturbed
Even after we have done our worst, we go
The way of the dinosaurs, leaving a vacancy
For the next apex predator to ***** up
The world will never stop, but we will
And I think you'll find we will not be sorely missed
Just because one man broke the rules
Causing a reactor to blow it's cool
All so the 'Woodpecker' could listen in
A wall of surveillance powered by nuclear
Fission, now it is a tourist hot spot, everyone
Can go to visit the moment this world stopped
But will we learn from the devastation that's left
History says otherwise, you can't fix stupid
Jun 18, 2019
Jun 18, 2019 at 5:46 PM UTC
ashes covered them all
the petals of the rose fall off rather quickly
when poison sickens all
leaving the people and the animals in
a corner, crumpled and smiling weakly.
the State seemed to have lost its mind
no one knew of what was to come
they were forever left behind
they tried to hold in the child’s laugh
the mother’s joy
the father’s grin
the baby’s squeal
they tried to encase it all in a metal dome
it may keep the poison out
but what about those who stood there before?
what about those who’s cells faced drought
who’s lovers were left behind
who’s children were left to die
what about the poison that has sunk into the pores
of generations and many more to come
the disease is long-standing;
thirty years is simply a blink of an eye
for the monster lurking nearby
slowly drowning
slowly suffocating
into the ground, where it will begin to **** more
and still, the city is coated in thin ash
as the sky dies
and the buildings rot
and the occasional visitor cries not for the destruction
but for her sister
who contracted the Poison not too long before the dome
she was paler when she came home
her smile faded as she came home
the city was paler when i came home
just a few years after.
Jun 1, 2019
Jun 1, 2019 at 11:38 PM UTC
she kissed her knees
waiting for the wind
to take her slowly away.
yet the hands of time
were far too patient
making her stay.
she was in pain
and way too
lonely
and yet
she never wanted company
just the storm
and she
doesn't deserve it:
neither the rainfall
nor this draught.
she kissed her knees
and whispered
out of new words to pray
"please."
she barely even muttered
"just take me today."
hands pressed tight together
and lips trembling shut
kissing her
wet and salted knees
with her back against the wall
facing a hard place
a dead end
to a thousand feet freefall
and rock bottom...
to dust.
she kissed her knees
with closed eyes
and an open wrist...
waiting for her tears
to slowly drown her----
with one more
shattered bottle
beside her
and one less
plea to say.
"just take me away."
she kissed her knees
and she hugged her legs.
all soaked in her own waste
and her own faults
she nods her head
totally out of lies to
chant herself asleep
until she gnawed herself
downwards
six feet deep.
she never became a
failed adult
because life blew up
in her face so suddenly
all she is
is a shattered child
waiting for life
to spew her out.
she kissed her knees...
Jun 13, 2018
Jun 13, 2018 at 1:02 PM UTC
Chernobyl.
A nuclear disaster, in a town called Chernobyl;
An odor-less killer, the invisible force.
As the radiation escapes, from the crumbling reactor,
We must cool it down, before it blows.
Evacuate Pripyat, the employee’s town,
The town of 35000; first on the list of infected people.
No warnings to the town folk, no evacuation,
The town’s men in the know, know the town is in trouble.
People bathe in the sun’s rays, soaking up the sun,
Whilst the dizzy and sick, fall with blackened skin.
But the only burn you'll get, is a nuclear radiation,
That will **** you in the end, as it will lead to infection.
Send in the investigators,
To check the biggest nuclear explosion ever.
The rumble outside a final warning, the fire brigade are now here.
The firemen are next, to fall to radiation.
The workers wives at home, are still oblivious.
But now they see the smoke rising, over the town.
So they close all the windows, an in vein attempt to keep the radiation out.
The workers cry, as they learn how bad it is,
The horrifying sight, of a nuclear cloud.
All things infected, poisoned by the air,
DNA is mutated; the time to panic is now.
The bride and groom walk through the town,
Unknown to them, there is poison in the air.
3.6 on the scale, leaves no need to worry,
But the readout is wrong, as the gage goes no higher.
Do not wear masks, it will cause suspicion,
A press conference is called, 15 hours after the explosion.
The men in charge are scared of the truth, so do nothing,
The situation is now, worse than they think.
Faces burnt, comrade’s panic,
The nuclear core is burning, it's radio-active.
But panic is worse, than radiation,
So there will be no warning and no order for evacuation.
22 hours after explosion, think we'll leave it to burn,
But it will burn for 3 months and poison the air.
We must find a remedy, quickly and quietly,
Thousands of helicopter runs, to cool the burning hot core.
We must put sand on the reactor, to stop it burning,
Evacuating the town is nonsense;
Wait until we know what's happening.
First thing in the morning, we must evacuate only a day late,
The people must view pictures of their family
And kiss them goodbye.
The biggest nuclear explosion, the earth had ever known,
The town will become a wasteland, everyone will be gone
17000 kids, infected by the air,
Another 116000, people are evacuated.
The nuclear explosion in Russia, will radiate into Kiev
And Northern Ukraine will be uninhabitable,
For anything up to a century later.
And the towns people,
Could take the radiation with them into a new place,
So send them to Kiev with the poisoned nurses;
Infected by radiation, it burns their face.
Leave the pets behind, to become wild animals,
The army shoot the pets, because they can't live anymore.
All the people wear masks, to help themselves,
As they leave on the bus, their former lives are no more.
The skin folds down and falls from their bodies;
The men in the control room, at last begin to die.
The people are collapsing, all over the place,
The tears turn to burns, as the women begin to cry.
Drop sandbags into the reactor,
From helicopters whilst being infected,
We must cool it down and stop the fires burning.
We’re heading for meltdown, truly scared of the apocalypse,
'Count lives', means how many can we sacrifice.
Finding how many lives, it will cost to get the job done,
Unquestioned sacrifice and they were willing to go.
2 volunteers needed,
To swim under the reactor and open the valves by hand,
Swimming through poisoned water, this could **** you man.
If the water was cleared from inside,
There is no immediate threat of thermal explosion,
A million lives saved, said Gorbachev the president.
The A.Z. button was pressed, to lower the rods into the reactor,
But just the tips landed inside and shut it down.
A thermal explosion is on the way, to level 200 square kilometers
And wipe out Pripyat, Kyiv and 3 million citizens.
By day 3 they thought it must be a design fault,
By day 7 the radiations gone up and it’s getting hotter.
14 explosions in the past, were covered up,
This could take us years to clear up and make better.
60 days after the explosion, Moscow are told to shift the blame,
Chernobyl’s bosses had known, flaws in the design were classified.
Sat before the world in Vienna,
They blamed the men in the control room,
Even though they were ignorant, as to what would happen.
Not prepared enough, for a job so important,
A million lives in their hands; in the hands of the thoughtless.
Faulty design, in something so dangerous,
Will lead to our end, as were infected by rays, so radiant.
2 years after the accident, the inspector speaks out,
But his voice is covered up and his findings are not written down.
Valery Legasov, the inspector. The man who made the reports.
The men in charge of the reactor, were sentenced to ten years.
The incidents of tumors rise to more than in Britain all together.
This will last for about a 100000 years,
The radiation will be there for almost forever.
(C)2013 Aa Harvey. All Rights Reserved.
May 27, 2018
May 27, 2018 at 8:31 AM UTC
Vast the landscape I watch that rolls out, ragged,
Before my eyes, hurt words describing, haggard.
Moby soothes me but a little as I watch still fractured sights
Of what was and is in Chernobyl.
Marshlands filled with death and mutation,
Homely houses putrid with abandonment and radiation.
Broken tokens of people’s former lives and loves –
Where are they now?
Their hairless dolls, sitting in the middle of rooms,
Bathtubs, broken and oblique, empty.
Soap washes memory and nothing else away.
The sky has spoken; it is broken.
Push the poison out to sea. To see
They hadn’t time to leave a memory,
But ran, already dead while living,
Not allowed to gather souvenirs.
There’s nothing left for them here.
But did they die?
Nobody told us where they went,
Or why
This happened.
They are gone now, dispersed in Eurasia I suppose,
Like ash in the wind, like their future or past ghosts.
They haunt the places, the buildings and the waters,
Engulfing fish, and drying fungus on the northern trees,
Watching wolves still move through winter freeze,
Still beautiful in the taiga sun.
Tainted yet rife with energy not destroyed,
Trying to paint its passion on the sides of walls,
To venerate the people here and their lives,
Their animals, their clothing only frozen.
Sep 9, 2017
Sep 9, 2017 at 11:35 AM UTC
I stood, unseen, as the lights faltered and
I heard a heavy thud. A wave rushed through
me. My friend, out of reach, disappeared. Vapour.
The ceiling was gone - stars, stars. I couldn't
feel anything, it was all normal. Then,
the ***** came. It burned all down my throat
into my stomach, bitter bile tearing
me apart from the inside out. I couldn't
walk. Local hospital, apparently
I had a 50/50 chance. They filmed
me for evidence and I killed them in
the process. Cancerous. I was shipped to
Moscow, my wife being left in the dark.
Confidential. Contagious. Dangerous.
The ones who died were lucky, we were burning
alive from the inside out. My hair fell
from my body. My skin wept after the
false calm of nothingness. The dead skin fell
off in clouds of black dust, my flesh being
eaten and turning a violet black.
I can never have *** again, in case
I contaminate my wife. No more children.
Chromosonal damage. She was afraid
to touch me when I saw her again in
case she would die too. My skin will weep forever
and they call me one of the lucky ones.
Apr 29, 2017
Apr 29, 2017 at 7:19 AM UTC
Chernobyl
In this name what do I hear?
Inventive minds damaged in haste
Rushing to win points from a dying political
Party
One which nearly ended a strong nation of citizens who learned true survival
Selfless sacrifice in the heart of the monster of nuclear devastation.
A great machine was never the proven
Problem of the crisis.
Stubborn pride cut the ribbons to the start of a race to ensure the world's survival.
Such devotion and true golden hearts
Died before their reach to the finish
A lawn drawn by the stubborn elite
Elders
Pushing fate to the alternate story ending of extinction
Never giving up
The majority fought this unneeded war
Now survival and reclaim of lost lands
Becomes the true and defining line.
Dec 8, 2016
Dec 8, 2016 at 11:30 AM UTC
if love is a battlefield,
than my mind must be Chernobyl.
a nuclear war zone,
befitting,
I spent years developing a nuclear war head,
that can find lodging in your head.
it lays resident on the pillow on my bed,
my childhood shed,
while bad memories flow like a water drain up ahead,
and may remain with me until death.
maybe such a stigma on depression exists,
because no one still really knows what it is
hell, my mind can compute equations,
spit out essays,
but mental illness?
to solve mine would be aimless.
it lurks, it attacks, it burns
left like a forest fire to churn.
eats up your insides, you feel your ending coming close,
with no conclusiveness a doctor can diagnose.
only if life came with an easy mode,
maybe i'd be better off dealing with this alone.
this is for all the kids
who made Adam's song their song,
or find reprieve at the bottom of a ****
and find life a little bit too long.
can you hear the siren?
three, two...
seconds to eruption
one...
boom.
no time to snooze.
i wake and
immediately collapse into
pieces.
scattered,
in the people i will encounter today
until i come home
empty,
no parts of me left to be seen.
until i finally fall in bed,
close my eyes,
count 1, 2, 3,
and do it
all over again.
May 12, 2016
May 12, 2016 at 8:19 PM UTC
That was then, this is now
Who was where when what was how?
Hear them take their last breath as they're shot down
I scream
Floating in the gene pool, expecting the man who can walk on water to arrive
Sell outs and everyone who has had a bad week even though it's only Monday
Whippersnappers hang their heads in shame
I am one of twelve
So expendable
We live in gluttony
Lineleaders, math teachers, bottom-feeders have no idea
Watch them fall and be forced to crawl on their bellies
We laugh
Lewandowsky-Lutz dysplasia, getting back to your roots
Progeric clock-makers, lying dead on The Yellow Brick Road
Thin-skinned Transsexuals putting bricks in their purses
We live by eight
We die from our weight
And go unbloomed
-Tommy Johnson
Standing in a nuclear reactor somewhere in Chernobyl looking for the truth
It might be in my contaminated endoplasmic reticulum
I am a radiant
Doppler radar
Monopoly dollar
Singing in the shower, amateur hour
Projecting sour notes
Pouring out their hearts and souls, hear them
Trying
Moo-juice nectar, spilling off The Round Table
Blondes in red bracelets, Kabbalah saves them
Henry pays no tax, John Berryman's bats tell us
You are the lunatic
We are the two quarters of a half-wit
This whole thing is insane
-Tommy Johnson
Sep 17, 2014
Sep 17, 2014 at 10:49 AM UTC
Anthropogenic climate change
Nuclear fallout Chernobyl
Raptors flourish
And wolves
Dwell
Sleeping.
Catfish swimming
In a cooling eye
Grown old and untouchable
By mans wills.
Rusty ships
Wetlands
Roam free.
Storks in their nests
1875
The cheval de prjevalski
Dye without mercy
The fallout from time
A call to restore
A broken land.
The wolves cry
The wolves cry
Apr 24, 2014
Apr 24, 2014 at 8:38 PM UTC