#prague
On my last day of solo travel
I made the split decision to take stairs down
A random, haphazard side street.
I sat down at a cocktail bar
All by myself.
The only patron in this basement.
I was greeted with a smile
Missing one tooth
In the dark room
Asked what liquors I preferred
There is no menu
I listed off what I had tried and what I wanted to
She would sip a bit of the drink
Pipette on my outstretched hand
So I could give my input
As we constructed the flavors together
Laughing, eagerly offering and accepting my
suggestions of what the drink needed
Childlike wonder, curiosity, and play.
We experimented with absinthe
And amaretto, cherry, lavender, banana, sake, gin
pickled ***** coconut *** and umami bitters
She made me my first tiramisu martini.
A total of 5 cocktails in 5 hours spent together.
Lightly
I asked her why she moved to Prague -
Darkly
She said the single word “war”
She had to leave Kyiv or risk dying there.
She said she is so broke that she buys cheaper shoes that don’t fit and pads them with paper towels but still gets blisters.
She lives in a one bedroom with her mother.
Men started groping her on the train as early as nine.
She sincerely wishes her uncle would die.
She has made no friends in this city since she moved a year ago.
She has gotten fired before for being unlikeable and standing up for herself.
She painted the cocktail bar walls sage green after hours for free because the manager could not afford hiring a painter and she genuinely likes this job.
She is a polyglot: knows French, German, Ukrainian, Russian and English.
She’s vegan but she tries the fish-based bitters and egg whites for work every night and likes their taste.
She has not been to a doctor in years because she cannot afford it.
She has overdue medical bills racking up interest she worries about.
She got fined once for having an expired train ticket - now she always checks the expiration when she rides and has a valid ticket.
She points out, in her embroidered dress and matching embroidered jacket, that there’s cigarette holes from the ash the wind blew that she doesn’t have time to mend.
She has a college degree and a virtual master’s degree.
She thinks she’s old at 31.
She doesn’t trust men anymore.
She thinks that she’ll never get married or have children, even though she really wanted to when she was a little girl.
She was eager to smoke a cigarette outside when I needed to use the restroom.
She never let my water glass get empty.
She doesn’t know how she’ll make ends meet next month.
She asserts that life is unfair but that these are the cards she’s been dealt and they’ve made her stronger.
She thanked me as I left and told me that the conversation we had made her evening better
It was the most freeing feeling she had felt in months.
Being able to share and lighten the load of what she has been carrying alone made her emotional.
She says typically tourists and locals won’t ask or listen.
She feels othered by both.
We agree with tears in our eyes that we don’t even know each other’s names:
Margarita
Maria
We laugh, our names are so similar.
Jul 2, 2024
Jul 2, 2024 at 12:22 AM UTC
Turns out I've been New Yorker for a while
But I tend to other business and I doubt I'll path the mile
For you see the city where I'm from is dense with garbage piles
I figured it's big and confusing and it's yet to make me smile
I don't come from there or from its region or really from a place worthwhile
See, my place is vast and I don't get it, it changes fast and is hostile
And I just can't key into it, neither mainland, nor the isle
So I figured that a Prague boy has been a New Yorker for a while
Sep 5, 2019
Sep 5, 2019 at 9:02 AM UTC
To A&O / Danny Itkin
Saw two birds flying in Prague
Heralding warm summer's winds
Whoever sees them feels at home
You might even think that they're twins
Two birds enjoying cheese and strawberries
Slaloming clouds and city lights
Sharing experiences from overseas
Wondering what's next and what's right
If you meet them send my regards
Send my deepest love and sympathy
Tell them both that I'm right here
Curious about what will be
4.7.2019
Jul 28, 2019
Jul 28, 2019 at 6:08 PM UTC
_Elegantní Lebed_
On Vltava waters
I saw a Graceful Swan,
Peaceful and modest
Full of quiet confidence
She looked like a Fawn
I fall in love with her
From thousand miles away,
Frightened of thoughts
My crazy mind created
Swan spread her wings
To save me from darkness
I was one step away from jumping,
She embraced my sadness
And it felt like a heaven
Invited me to her secure haven
She patiently waited
Playing down her strength
Showing me a way to the calmness I crave
Above Vltava flow
In my mind I see
Gorgeous Swan dances
Twosome with Firebird
_6.7.2019_
Jul 7, 2019
Jul 7, 2019 at 1:50 AM UTC
I dream
how her morning nakedness
overshadows the depth of old plants
and how her tears of joy twinkle
at the edge of my deluge
I forget
how in a gray black past
my pillow was wet with tears
and I kissed it because I could not expect
ever to embrace someone like her
I honour
forever how I found her
the pearl in a sea full of mines
and how she quenched my sadness
as if it had been hers for many years
I cherish
how on a late day in June
on an ancient brigde in Prague
I asked for her hand and how her eyes filled up
with the light that keeps me warm
I hope
she will stay
Jun 24, 2016
Jun 24, 2016 at 6:21 PM UTC
Dark flows down to the street's pools
The blotting paper of sky in grey
has imprints of cyclamen roses
Right there on the street they are lynching
with a welding torch the rests
of this night I have spent with a walk
to assure myself that I live still
Maybe this is the morning
that will give an amnesty
to all the time barred loves
Nov 1, 2015
Nov 1, 2015 at 5:25 PM UTC
Water is reeked with nicotine
The souls are reeked with Ginsberg
but the heads and the thoughts have both pungent smell like
hot rooster comb flowers
I slept last time the day before yesterday
I saw the ****** Mary so beautiful
in that glow of blue & gold
neons of Bethlehem
thumbing a lift near a cadillac with CD plate
& the jazz was caroling in wet sand
there were twelve bars in the honour of that boy
who has to come here one day finally, ****
he has to come just for jamming in this world
as it's said he could /!/ get all that mess of ours
off ourselves gentlemanly playing the part.
Nov 2, 2015
Nov 2, 2015 at 5:31 AM UTC
The pale morning will sing of our forgotten things,
Left in hostel rooms,
reservations made for 3.
We sat amongst the rooftops of Prague,
while the city reached for it's sky
and scraped the clouds
and strained it's structure,
built on top of itself,
overflowing with countless nameless people from it's brims.
And we sat amongst the rooftops.
Watching the sun change it's mood,
Watching as it tired from it's burning persistence,
Watching it paint the sky with it's own paradox,
Blue to pink to purple to dead.
The solar system above
reflecting the solar system of the city.
The way the warm nights allowed us to finally breathe.
And we sat amongst the rooftops.
Repairing the damage of the strain on our souls,
Too young to attempt to take on the world,
too old to walk the beaten hometown streets for yet another summer.
Starving,
exhilarated,
no cash in our pockets but feeling richer than queens.
We tracked the route on a torn map we stole and defaced from the school library,
on which we had planned our freedom,
running hand in hand from the chaos of our mundane
plotted out our new testiments, our own brand new stories,
our old lives could not see
or touch
or ruin this
for this was ours only.
And we sat amongst the rooftops.
Drowning in life.
And listened to this song.
Because nothing else would quite capture the moment as precisely
As an acoustic lions roar.
Oct 13, 2015
Oct 13, 2015 at 8:57 PM UTC
The likes of you I can't describe,
Yet I love to eat between your thighs.
The melody you spake to me
Unfolds my greatest sovereignty.
I crave to quaff all of your spit,
And swallow every drop of it.
Don't cheat me of your tasty flesh,
Those bare and supple ****** *******
Your eyes that follow my firm gaze,
While we kiss and lick and misbehave.
I need to feel each piece of skin,
Smashing girl and boy parts over and over again.
It's such a treat to eat you whole;
I'm obsessed with eating 19-year-olds.
May 8, 2014
May 8, 2014 at 9:32 PM UTC
We know you, and your little dark colors too. A picture book in your purse penned in mustaches on the full faces of your fare. We call you from bed, 8 o' clock in the morning, dog-light you slow wander the Peruvian darkness making jellyfish tentacles with your hands while you feel your way through Salem. We're colder than night and we wake thrice the bits of your day gig. You collapse in a green field of dandelion where thrushes drown you in Brown. We gorge ourselves on mango slivers, pineapple yolks, a half of grapefruit. We know you are close to your end.
On the tops of the cities you call to your lycan friends, the half-sick and muted bray allures them to you, from Bratislava and Mimon, the thoroughfare through the suq. We wait. The foregone untold, the beep beep jug jug swoop sound of the nightingale, in all her dun glory, we wait. Then, as if descending through the moor-lounging silver smoke, the cool stickiness to your fingertips; the fog.
We are there when the blue-less and smoky screen surrounds you, when you shank the auburn Scot hair of the sly fox that stalks, say, a cigarette from your lips. When you take the corners swiftly, gadding the streets. The prize king of vulpicide. You rub its matte fur against your bristly gray beard. And while you lay in your lumps of twelve carat flesh you bleat and you nag. One day you will never come home.
May 2, 2014
May 2, 2014 at 3:14 PM UTC
Maybe you're the colosseum. The code to get through the glass doors is actually just '1954'. You could put up the painting of me at auction, or I could take a cruise from London to the Islands North of Siberia, a stop in a department store in Northern Greece. I stop and take a ride in the middle front-third seat of a older friend's younger brother's car, and force all of them to come outside and see the spider's eggs at Bob-o-Link. Massive cornucopias of cotton walls entwined with silk.
In the department store I ask to be introduced to someone who can take me by the hand and recognize me by my number, show me everything I'll need to shoot a full-length feature, even how I can get to Prague so I can do a little shopping. But the horror of seeing is so frightening, and the girl that I came with wants to do nothing.
I find a little shop selling Czech candies, music, and newspapers, so I try to buy everything but the horror is getting closer. I'm in a lazy Susan, how often does that happen? One more turn and I'll lose my stomach contents and then I won't need anything.
I take a climb up a street that says "Smrzlinu Ahead," but the houses on the street are all either empty or boarded up. I drift in the soccer field, watching my legs, looking over my shoulder. I fall for a pile of clothes that can hide me but are also very soft to lay in.
Another cruise- tropical, perhaps? Somewhere for coy adults, who shed their skin in Winter when their eyes start molting off. Someday I will place both hands into the ocean, I'll dream huge, and go swimming until I start to laugh. One day I'll sink to the floor of the bourn, maybe the same day I wake up and I'm not swimming alone.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 4:28 AM UTC