And she reads Chekhov in the bathtub
thinking that 19th century Russia
must have been visually interesting, but literarily dull,
writing overstuffed with description and repetition.
It's pungent perfume pleasant at first, but soon overbearing.
She never made it through Anna K. either,
and only conquered Ilyich for academics sake.
Swimming in the long winded, emotional descriptions,
all she could think, was of what Northern ancestor
decided all Russians should go by three names
and what cunning linguist adored 'V' and 'Y' to such extent
that he proclaimed they should be used as much as humanly possible.
A popularized,  sadistic joke
for a younger brother with a speech impediment.

We are all human beings
We all have our own lives
And different ways we live them
But each one of us is a writer
And this poem is for all of you

All of you who have virtues and use them in your writing
Those who use flashbacks and revisit mental photo albums

Beginning the story from the middle for that’s usually where you mind is at
Looking back then looking forward
Studying the past so you can be ready for what is to come

Recording catastrophes with a number two pencil

Tales and blurbs of tragedy
Caused by love or the lack there of

Rewards and punishment
Self-reliance and self-fulfillment

We are mere narrators
Humble, maybe unreliable
Equipped with numerous devices
Ironic Paradoxes
Red herrings
Fortuitous plot twists
Metaphors
Allegoric hyperboles
Analogies
Oxymorons and onomatopoeias

We sling Chekhov’s gun like bandits of literacy

We’re visionary revolutionaries
Revolution of the mind, body and soul

Changing ourselves and examining who and what we are
To become what we are destined to be
The best

Rejecting convention
Building our own paths
That lead to cliffhangers

Romantic lust
Comedic affairs
Dark massacres
Spiritual healing

Religious speculation
And the questioning of the way we, the people are being governed

We use the tools we are giving to sculpt new art that the world can stand in awe of

Personification
Symbolic imagery

Practicing pastiche with respect
Dionysian imitatio

Surreal reality
Defying mortality

Reiteration and retort

Using nature to express emotion and thought

Doubts and fear

Opposites
Morals and ethics

Satisfying curiosity

Parodying what we see
Embellishing just a little

We us word play to dive deep into the topic of conscious, subconscious and unconscious thought

Using satire to poke fun at the human condition,  its senses and perception of the universe to get readers thinking

Expressing our anger, our boundless joys
Desiring unknown pleasures

Seeing past the fallacies put before us

We write with great candor about war, personal conflicts, and self-abuse

With hinting undertones to give these ideas a second thought

We write of the supernatural, metaphysical mysteries
Outlandish, obscure mind boggling theories

As the clock ticks too fast for us and the characters we’ve created

Demolishing the fourth wall with a sledge hammer of defamiliarization

Epiphanies in a parking lot
Speaking in the 1st, 2nd or 3rd person

Using fun things like anagrams and palindromes
Candy for the lovers of such things

Spontaneity is an understatement
Nonsense is an insulting overstatement
Absurdity seems to fit just right

We are chameleons
We can write in various forms
Streams of gratifying consciousness
Brilliant prose
Beautiful poetry

And chose to use or merely acknowledge the ways to achieve these forms
Rhetoric, rhythm  and rhyme
Meter and mora
Conceit and consonance
Assonance
Intonation
Working with phonaesthetics  

And accenting aesthetics

A poem can or could not be organized as such
If we want to get technical about it

We have a poem
With a number of verses
And in those verses
Are lines
And those lines might rhyme
And have a meter or rhythm
Stressed or unstressed syllables

In contrast to that we may write
Without all of that and use emotion
Feeling and structure our work with what we feel is the best way
Line breaks
Pauses and puns
Silly similes
Ambiguous antonyms  
Intonation, linguistics
Fight against the fascists of grammar and conservative correctness

So, in the end we are writers of a rainbow kaleidoscope forms, devices, ways and ideas

But we alone are the ones who make the world think
Make it move
Revolt
Renew
Learn
Look back
Remember
Cry
Smile
Forget
Ease

Write my friends write until your mind explodes and your fingers bleed

Read, read and become inspired
Even if what you’re reading is bad cheese

Forget getting published it’s the writing that matters
Disregard the off-putting, critical chatter

And if you think no one reads
Than be the seed and sprout a tree of astounding artistry
And let’s begin a new movement composed of ideals that will hold true forever
I might be preaching to the choir but it must be said that poetry; literature isn’t dead

Wild rose, aggressive usurper,
relentless conqueror of attention, quarrels
wants to make me jelous,
pretends  she is nothing but poetry distilled,
stops at every table and whispers:
"He is hard prose, the syntax, I can't grasp"
Unmindful of sly looks from various corners,
that in fact suggest, I had good riddance,
I am concerned about the clutter on my desk,
that escaped my notice during the days I was in that chasm

I was deeply in to Dostoevsky,
my cleansing ritual on such occasions: the Russian masters
when she passed my cubicle she spies Chekhov
lying on my table, waiting his turn
"The lady with the lapdog"* she reads aloud, with suspicion
would she ever understand, what Dostoevsky to me,
would have told?

i only started collecting a library, because, would you believe it, my local library was a pauper in rags and tatters; apologies for omitting necessary diacritic marks, the whiskey was ******* on icecubes to a shrivel.*

ernest hemingway, e.m. forster, mary shelley,
aesop, r. l. stevenson, jean-paul sartre,
jack kerouac, sylvia plath, evelyn waugh,
chekhov, cortazar, freud, virginia woolf,
philip k. ****, dostoyevsky, aleksandr solzhenitsyn,
oscar wilde, malcolm x, kafka, nabokov,
bukowski, sacher-masoch, thomas a kempis,
yevgeny zamyatin, alexandre dumas,
will self, j. r. r. tolkien, richard b. bentall,
james joyce, william burroughs, truman capote,
herman hesse, thomas mann, j. d. salinger,
nikos kazantzakis, george orwell,
philip roth, joseph roth, bulgakov, huxley,
marquis de sade, john milton, samuel beckett,
huysmans, michel de montaigne, walter benjamin,
sienkiewicz, rilke, lipton, harold norse,
alfred jarry, miguel de cervantes, von krafft-ebing,
kierkegaard, julian jaynes, bynum porter & shephred,
r. d. laing, c. g. jung, spinoza, hegel, kant, artistotle,
plato, josephus, korner, la rochefoucauld, stendhal,
nietzsche, bertrand russell, irwin edman,
faucault, anwicenna, descartes, voltaire, rousseau,
popper,  heidegger, tatarkiewicz, kolakowski,
seneca, cycero, milan kundera, g. j. warnock,
stefan zweig, the pre-socratics, julian tuwim,
ezra pound, gregory corso, ted hughes,
guiseppe gioacchino belli, dante, peshwari women,
e. e. cummings, ginsberg, will alexander, max jacob,
schwob, william blake, comte de lautreamont,
jack spicer, zbigniew herbert, frank o'hara,
richard brautigan, miroslav holub, al purdy,
tzara, ted berrigan, fady joudah, nikolai leskov,
anna kavan, jean genet, albert camus, gunter grass,
susan hill, katherine dunn, gil scott-heron,
kleist, irvine welsh, clarice lispector, hunter thompson,
machado de assisi, reymont, tolstoy, jim bradbury,
norman davies, shakespeare, balzac, dickens,
jasienica, mary fulbrook, stuart t. miller,
walter la feber, jan wimmer, terry jones & alan ereira,
kenneth clark, edward robinson, heinrich harrer,
gombrowicz, a. krawczuk, andrzej stasiuk, ivan bunin,
joseph heller, goethe, mcmurry, atkins & de paula,
bernard shaw, horace, ovid, virgil, aeschyles,
rumi, omar khayyam, humbert wolfe, e. h. bickersteth,
asnyk, witkacy, mickiewicz, slowacki, lesmian,
lechon, lep szarzynski, victor alexandrov, gogol,
william styron, krasznahorkai, robert graves,
defoe, tim burton, antoine de saint-exupery,
christiane f., salman rushdie, hazlitt, marcus aurelius,
nick hornby, emily bronte, walt whitman,
aryeh kaplan, rolf g. renner, j. p. hodin, tim hilton... etc.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                            Chekhov’s Rifle

In Act I there was a rifle on the wall
A Mosin-Nagant of vintage make
The weapon was ready and on call
If someone in Act II made a mistake

In Act II some surly men appeared at the door
They entered, each with a menacing sneer
Scuffing their grubby boots across the floor
And Chekhov asked of them, “What do you want here?”

In Act III there was no rifle on the wall
Chekhov had sold it to pay the rent – that’s all

Everyone is anxious
For Chekhov’s gun is still on the wall
It has not been fired
And we are soon approaching the next act

What do they wait for?
A provocation?!

Dear college age white boy
(Not unlike myself)
Your pseudo-nihilism bores them
We all know these things are just for show
Besides we see how much of an elitist you are
And how little you understand the words you are saying
If Nietzsche’s life were recast
You’d be the man beating the Turin Horse

Why does he say such things?
Does he understand the human mind, the human condition?!

We all wait for the collapse to come
And all of its children to return home
For we are already all aliens to each other
And we know what sweet flowers can grow from ashes
If life is to be a garden
I intend to be a worm

Does he really mean that?
We can see in his eyes he is not convinced

How long have we been going in these circles?
Or is it true that I am unique in this regard alone?
Every philosopher
Every poet
Every self perpetuating artist has their bag of tricks
I have whatever I can pillage

Everything that can be said
Has already been said
He am going back into the gallery
And drawing mustaches on all the faces

And as the audience leaves
Chekhov’s gun remains untouched, suspended by a thread

And this time only
There are no deeper meanings

I'm watching an old Soviet movie
one without English subtitles
the whole day it hasn't stopped raining
the opening shots are of a foggy

seafront, a lone figure walking
a guy on a bicycle holding a puppy
riding past someone leaning on the corner
of a house in which the light

suddenly comes on & a couple appear
later on, a budding romance
between two holidaymakers in this, the Crimea
slow-paced, this movie reminds

me of an Aki Kaurismaki
& I want to share it with the world
& muse on how the Crimea
saw Pushkin, Chekhov, Mayakovsky

amongst others visiting it's shores
the whole day it hasn't stopped raining
& I don't know if I feel even more English
now or Russian or whether it's all just a trick

The internal battle..eternal....(one from the vault)


Lucifer and Jehovah dancing some mad bossa nova

While angels on horse backs fought devils with black jacks

The white dove of peace had surrendered his lease

So God ripped off his wings.. he no longer sings

Then the Devil ripped out his heart so it could end at the start.

Wagner and Chopin got frightened..

..and off they ran.

But Beethoven and Bach were sat in the park

Composing arias to fight Hells hot fires.

While Chekhov and Handel burned coramandel

But the smoke from that pyre stank like a byre.

Socrates was sat dispensing the ethics

Hippocrates swore while dishing out medics

The Muses were musing one or two were enthusing

Oooh look.. the good against sinner

Let's go down the bookies and have a bet on the winner.

Cometh the day cometh the morn

Cometh the hour cometh the dawn.

Here is Joshua blowing his horn

And here comes Gabriel but all that he meets

Are the countless dead lining up on the streets

And the wounded and deathbound far far below

I feel sorry for Gabriel I wish he could go.

But Picasso arrives and cries

My God it's my Guernica I'll do a pastiche

Oh F*ck it he says and has a pastis (or two)

Then Pollack turns up totally ******

Picks up a paint and says what I have missed?

What a fantastic sight.. angels flashing demons crashing

The hounds of Hell with teeth a gnashing

Then Neptune arrives astride his watery chariot

Scything through Demons and sat beside Judas Iscariot

Mermen and mermaids mercilessly slayed

By Beelzebubs prototypes

Those that live in the black nights.

But as the dawn breaks God knows what it takes

So he sends for his legions calls out to all regions

Take arms and do battle

Till we hears Satans death rattle.

And the heavens rip asunder to the sound of the thunder.

Satan rings on Hells bell.. tells them all is not well

Then disappears from our sight as if he's turned off the light.

Then I awake with a start knowing that I've been a part

Of something vast something grand

A spiritual war being fought in this land

I am alive and I shall survive.

PRAISE BE.

~I remember...*

~For my two sisters

Future lovers
Are not knocking on my doors,
No line ups
Around the corner
Of my house;
The ladder to my window
Lies injured
On yellow
Lawn
Not nurtured,
Down bellow.

On the Queen Anne arm chair
Ashes of my
Fabulous years,
Wireless affairs,
No strings
Unattached
To my violin.

Sketches in the ****
Of lovers past
Are shivering,
Longing for my tapestries,
Trying, in vain, to hide
Under sad sepia.

Portraits, I promised
To paint
To Dorian Gray.
May still age
Given just a little
More time.

On the stage
I, Manon Lescaut, die,
Only sixteen -
Poor Knight De Grieux

Just another year,
please,
That I have not for sale
Anymore.
Pastels and aquarelles
Turned monochrome;
Chronos
Doesn't stop here
For a single moment -
Walks all over.

In the middle of my chaos
23/7
(What's an hour glass
Or more?),
Sleeps
Master Behemoth.

His fur coat
Once luxurious black
Has specks of grey,
One white whisker;
So are three of my hair.
Wise
Sybilla?

I don't think so.

It's not what
It used to be, my Master
Let's go out
To the open
Let's breathe,
Let's see new cats.
On the chopping block,
Let's lose our heads
Let's get lost.

Let's elope together
The weather
Should be
Just rainy-fine
For the Requiem,
For the funeral.

Tree Sisters gone
To the Cherry Orchard,
Uncle Vanya, again,
Left alone on the estate.
Seagull, before rain
Flies over my head
For the last time.


Author Notes
Two of my sisters are gone already.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov's plays:
Three Sisters
Cherry Orchard
Uncle Vanya
Seagull

...To name just a few. Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost, two operas as well, one by Puccini, one by Esprit Auber. "A woman like Manon can have more than one lover."  The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

V. the ballad of briseis

my heart is of
the flesh of figs,
and that which
i cannot touch:
grainy sweet
garnet nectar
pretty to behold
but easy to bruise

no god shall speak for me, briseis
for this fig-heart, like the heart of man
craves art as it does god
and though i know you not by name,
but only pseudonym:
blood, words, and love,
we are kindred souls

i'd like to believe that we
are cut of the same cloth
hewn of the same mound of clay
(or cast into the same iron, i suppose
for we became one another's anchor
the day we met)

i once told you, my dear briseis,
that if you taught me symbiosis
i would teach you love
for you found pragma
in philosophy cold
markov's blankets
freud's ego, plato's cave
whereas i found pragma
in alchemy's poetry
chekhov's gun
freud's neurotics, plato's human

it means nothing.

the alchemy lies
beyond the chemicals,
beyond the seed and the egg,
beyond our festivals of atonement,
beyond my prima materia
and your unfulfilled magnum opus

it lies in simple interdependence,
the oceans, the heavens,
the forests, the deserts,
the storms, the famines,
the herds of wildebeest,
the colonies of ants,
the beady dew on the spider web
and the purling river shallows,
our acrid mouths yearning for mother's milk,
the boy who makes us cry at night,
the fiery logs roaring against the cold air,
the hoot-owls and the faces on the wall
(our skeletons never did stay in the closet)
bathed in that slow, hideous wonder
those interplays of love and symbiosis

as i drown and die in reverie once more
pray that the stakes may be forever higher
that i find those eternal elysian fields
so long as our achilles lives to fight again

we are more alike,
than you or i would
ever dare to admit,
briseis

so humor this fig-heart:
hold me and tell me
that it'll be all right

i have come to discern
a great breach
a chasm that stands
between
apprehension of the world
and the world
itself

like some character
in a play by Chekhov,
perpetually seeking answers
yet, offering no
truths...
as an eternal madness, a seeking,
ever seeking, yet
accomplishing neither end nor
resolution

a tune, played almost to
conclusion,
missing that final chord,
so that we see, that life has,
tampered...

(as grief enters, stage right)
"line please..."

Anaphora I feel for you
Anaphora I like you
Anaphora I met you at a party
Anaphora I didn't think you'd remember me but
Anaphora I found out you did when you asked about
Anaphora I had told you about
Anaphora I remember you wanted to know
Anaphora I think there may have been something
Anaphora I something deeper at play but
Anaphora I'm not quite sure
Anaphora I may look like I have it all, but a large part of me remains underdeveloped, I'm not sure how to map out the chart of my feelings, if you remember me now, please
Anaphora I say something, please reach out again over
Anaphora I over that black void and find me, alive, waiting patiently by the phone for your ring,
Anaphora I or your words to save from doubt

Anna Foura, I feel trapped, like some protagonist from an old Russian book, probably approved by Chekhov, I lie in wait playing dissonant jazz and idle daydreaming, I miss you ana
Foura I feel for you anaphora.

He rubs me raw
Not with his hands
No, not anymore
Not as often
But with his words
From the outside, in

The tears coat my eyes
Its the middle of class
Yet my thoughts aren't on Chekhov
But on how close the day is to done
Which terrifies me more than
It probably should

Pavlov must be getting old;
His ears keep ringing and he's can't stop,
Can't stop his own spit-up drooling self.

His dog isn't as well trained as he thought,
But Pavlov has run off the pages and fallen out of energy
To do anything but listen to a worse bark than bite

His dog is chasing Schrödinger's cat, he thinks,
But he can't go to the window to check, can't go to see
That perhaps he's only hunting his own tail

And down the hall, Aesop is telling stories to no one,
His words floating across creaky floor board seas
While Occam simply bleeds out in the bathtub.

And Plato, in his man-cave, watches the tv flicker light and shadow
While he wonders about the world he'll never know,
Wonders about the ****** dog that won't stop barking.

And Pandora is coming to collect her matchbox rent,
Tears still in her eyes from a deck stacked against her,
I guess 'cause Chekhov never loved her.

He's holding a gun to his head, eyes clenched tight,
He's wrestling with his own existence,
Challenging the story his god has written.

And Achilles is tripping on his own feet,
And Montezuma has plugged the lavatory again
While Maxwell bashes in another skull.

And Pavlov must be getting old;
His ears keep ringing and he's can't stop,
Can't stop his own spit-up drooling self.

And down the hall,
Schrödinger still can't find that **** cat.

Hard to put into words
the extent of grief.

No cavalry of relief in sight
coming over the hill.

You, my son, those
last days, so ill.

Unlike you,
you soldier like
in life's fight.

Death took you unaware
that night
and again
the day after.

No present mirth,
no laughter,
no Shakespearean drama
set in tow,
no Chekhov way
with words,
no Ibsen dark talk,

just this, these words,
and a blown from palm kiss.

Silent words:
we love and miss.

I read lots of Russian lit (in translation, of course) while in Viet-Nam

I understood poor, young Raskolnikov
And read all I found by Anton Chekhov
Remembered nothing about Bulgakhov
Heard naughty whispers about Nabokov
Thrilled to the Cossacks in old Sholokov
And then I learned about Kalashnikov –
This, I decided, is where I get off!



Moc Hoa (pronounced something like “mock wah”) is a now-prosperous town on the Song Vam Co Tay near the border with Cambodia.  In 1970 it was rather down at the heels and was a center of military activity, including mercenaries presumably controlled by the C.I.A*.

If this was a book, I would guess the end
before it came
I would know the villains from the heroes
—Judging from mustachios with a penchant for being twirled
—Judging from gleaming armor and soulful eyes
I wouldn't have to wonder at the meaning
or fight for it
I could say, 'I knew that would happen'
Chekhov's gun would be used every time
Everything would be impossibly simple and neat
all the loose ends would be tied in pretty bows
all the questions answered with trite wisdom
And I wouldn't be left,
wondering
at the end
I would simply fade
to the white emptiness
of an unwritten page

Dostoyevsky lies above Chekhov
The yellowed pages of Marquez
Stands aside in sad mood
With hundred years of solitude
From the bearded Tolstoy
Peeps out an innocent boy
For a small piece of land
Just enough to rest in peace
It's all a wildly strange mix
Where Tintin rules over Asterix
Hawking confuses the soul
With time's history and blackhole
On a pedestal Shakespeare loses might
His musty volumes half eaten by termite
Tagore not yet ready to lose his vigour
Shines upon eyes with portly figure
There's astronomy, history, magic and science
Rubbing shoulders with morality and conscience
Neatly stacked one upon the other
Mostly crumbling by time's weather
Ill preserved and not anymore read
Muddled words lost in the head.

But I only admire the tidying woman
Who labours hard does the best she can
Arrange them to restore their old glories
If by chance someone reopens the stories.

Gull

We've got 'em bang to rights, the noisy screamers
and harbingers of our oceanic discontent;
Jonathan Livingston, George Barker, Chekhov,
fish and chips, snatched sandwiches, a certain
stink of half-remembered, half-digested fish.

Forgetting how huge they are is one thing; worse
is forgetting how gull they are, how unlike
anything else in the many wild kingdoms we
pompously incline to regard as our home despite
the anarchy of mosquito, buzzard, lynx.

A white head endangered among rocks, scrabbling
claws spread to meet the gust, there is nothing
romantic about this unseasoned life, bare feed
and guano, profitless, enduring, cold
as midnight, we think, is cold; but always cold.

In moments we are gull, instances of dream,
flapping from the black precipice, swooning
in the down-draught, knowing no knowledge
except the squawking mouths,. the endless need
revealed for a second in cowl of black and grey.

The Russians have taught me
  that nothing has changed

Instead of Nazis and Fascists,
  we have terrorists to blame

Whether Turgenev or Chekhov,
  Tolstoy or Marx

When our nature’s in play,
—much of life remains dark

(Wayne Pa.-Minella’s Diner: June, 2016)

The Russians have taught me
  that nothing has changed

Instead of Nazis and Fascists,
  we have terrorists to blame

Whether Turgenev or Chekhov,
  Tolstoy or Marx

When our nature’s in play
  —much of life remains dark

(Wayne Pa.-Minella’s Diner: June, 2016)