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Aaron Salzman Aug 2014
A drab drop drips
Downed casualty
Down casually.

A sulfuric gust cycles
In three fly-by nights.
A gust hoping,
A breeze yearning to dab a wet tear off a moistened spring cheek.
Floating by on a wisp of breath,
Breathed once by the blessed. Now irreparably tainted, then incomprehensible anew:
Treated by the respirations of the perspiring, expending breath on czarist ears, aspiring;
Cured by the tongues of the insatiably dying
And by those primary soothe-ers, invisibly crying.
Alveoli gripping that sine qua non of civilization
Until they must release the once-oxygen into the hills of Kyivan Rus.

A first breath and second
As much as a penultimate and final.
And witness to the chronology that led to such a
Bloodbath-blessed blast
As this.
THIS Mohammedan colonel from the Caucasus yells with his voice and wigwags with his arms.
The interpreter translates, "I was a friend of Kornilov, he asks me what to do and I tell him."
A stub of a man, this Mohammedan colonel ... a projectile shape ... a bald head hammered ...
"Does he fight or do they put him in a cannon and shoot him at the enemy?"
This fly-by-night, this bull-roarer who knows everybody.
"I write forty books, history of Islam, history of Europe, true religion, scientific farming, I am the Roosevelt of the Caucasus, I go to America and ride horses in the moving pictures for $500,000, you get $50,000 ..."
"I have 30,000 acres in the Caucasus, I have a stove factory in Petrograd the bolsheviks take from me, I am an old friend of the Czar, I am an old family friend of Clemenceau ..."
These hands strangled three fellow workers for the czarist restoration, took their money, sent them in sacks to a river bottom ... and scandalized Stockholm with his gang of strangler women.
Mid-sea strangler hands rise before me illustrating a wish, "I ride horses for the moving pictures in America, $500,000, and you get ten per cent ..."
This rider of fugitive dawns....
Qualyxian Quest May 2020
During Roman Imperial times
There were Roman, Constantinian
Imperial forms of Christianity

During Spanish Inquisitorial times
There were Spanish Inquisitorial
Forms of Christianity

During Russian Czarist times
There were Russian Czarist
Forms of Christianity

During **** German times
There were **** German
Forms of Christianity

During Trumpfuck American times
There are Trumpfuck American
Forms of Christianity

Vanity of Vanities
Says the Preacher
All is Vanity!!!
Qualyxian Quest Jun 2021
It’s the birthday of poet Czeslaw Milosz (books by this author), born in Szetejnie, Lithuania (1911). He grew up in a Polish-speaking family. His father was an engineer for czarist Russia during World War I. The family traveled all over the country as his father helped rebuild roads and bridges. Milosz was fascinated by all the different religions in that part of Russia, from Catholicism, Greek Orthodox, and Protestantism to Judaism and pagan mysticism. He loved listening to village folktales about the Lithuanian lakes, rivers, and forests, and these tales later influenced his poetry.

The family eventually settled in Poland. Milosz studied law rather than literature in college because, he said, “There were so many girls studying literature it was called the marriage department.” In 1931 he co-founded a literary group that was so pessimistic about the future it was nicknamed the “Catastrophists.” The group predicted a coming world war, but nobody believed them. He worked for Polish Radio for a while, but he got fired when he let Jews broadcast their opinions on the air. Another radio station sent him to cover the invasion of Poland by **** forces in 1939. After the invasion he found a job as a janitor at a university, secretly writing anti-**** poetry for underground publications. He witnessed the genocide of the Jews in Warsaw and was one of the first poets to write about it in his book of poems Rescue (1945).

After the war Milosz got a job working as a diplomat for communist Poland, though he wasn’t a party member. One night in the winter of 1949, on his way home from a government meeting, he saw several jeeps filled with political prisoners, surrounded by soldiers. He said, “It was then that I realized what I was part of.” He defected in 1951, and made it to Paris even though his passport had been confiscated.

Most intellectuals in Paris were pro-communist at the time and they thought of Milosz as either a traitor or a madman for leaving Poland. The poet Pablo Neruda attacked him in an article called “The Man Who Ran Away.” In 1953 Milosz published a book about communism called The Captive Mind in which he argued that people were too ready to accept totalitarian terror for the sake of an imaginary future. He moved to the United States and began teaching at the University of California at Berkeley in 1960. He had mixed feelings about the United States: he wrote, “What splendor! What poverty! What humanity! What inhumanity! What mutual good will! What individual isolation! What loyalty to the ideal! What hypocrisy! What a triumph of conscience! What perversity!”

He kept writing poetry in Polish even though almost no one was reading it. His books had been banned in Poland and his poems weren’t translated into English until 1973. Then, in 1980, he got a phone call at 3:00 in the morning telling him that he’d won the Nobel Prize in literature.

Czeslaw Milosz said, “I have read many books, but to place all those volumes on top of one another and stand on them would not add a cubit to my stature. Their learned terms are of little use when I attempt to seize naked experience, which eludes all accepted ideas,” and he said, “Language is the only homeland.”
His contradictory statements about the United States are accurate.

And "Language is the only homeland". Spoken like a true poet.
"Sic semper evello mortem tyrannis"
translation = thus always I
bring death to tyrants.”

Above the fray of twittering,
squabbling, and madding crowds,
an arrogantly belligerent creature deified,
yet vilified gauche, haughty lumpenproletariat
decreeing blind, deaf and dumb obeisance,
whereby upon forced Sacrificial Altar
erected golden Olympian fleeced perch,
(he acquired, effected, indoctrinated
vis-à-vis bloodless coup d'etat)
absolute dictatorship jump/
kick starting  veneration,
albeit forced subservience

buzzfeeding, fostering (long)
totalitarian reign crafting ship of state  
into figurative unwieldy beastly Leviathan
through present Century21
incorporating deterministic, fascistic,
masochistic, narcissistic, opportunistic,
and shamanistic trumpeting
holier than though malevolent fiery bombast
fulminating laws, exuding self worth
hortatory exclamations decreeing
(by fiat, that no commoner
lest they want an Escort into Crossover realm

he/she cannot afford to Dodge commands,
especially if and when Porsche
comes to shove Fiats promulgated)
absolute valued flat out sharp devotion
pledging (née requiring) pilgrimages,
where his birthplace sanctified
as cultural heritage site,
(a humble abode in backwater of Queens)
dammed, deemed, and donned
for populace to worship
and pay requisite penance de rigueur
in order to avoid premature death;

said consecration viz complex edifice
analogous to Taj Mahal
self declared god enshrined provenance,
where pathway paved with gold
courtesy self declared demigod;
(one blimey, flimsy, nasty
shortish and brutal Attila the *** wannabe),
who served daily dollop of dregs
in ***** deeds done dirt cheap demitasse
admiring, fawning, kowtowing,
primping, et cetera himself,
i.e. a Beatle browed, bobble headed

mop top orange hirsute Talking Head
(though likeness of his trademark
coiffed haired countenance
plastered across every square inch)
detested, and feared unto Caesar,
whose reflection shone thru
and across wall to wall hall
of mountain king mirrors;
meanwhile Blood, Sweat And Tears
for Fears Beastie Beach Boys
and Goo Goo Dolls with ******* aplenty
painstakingly enslaved away

raspily, tentatively verily warbling words,
(while simultaneously severely afflicted
with heebie-jeebies) sung,
(albeit barely audible) Stayin' Alive
amidst noise of torture chamber
smells of burning flesh  
as evidenced by branded, pierced,
snd tattooed rebellious insubordinates
invariably found culpable regarding lèse-majesté,
thus futilely skittering helter skelter
from his majesty paw sized hands
adorned with precious jewels monogrammed

with initials of  Frederick Christ Trump Sr
within whose grotto the heir
found solace, perserverence, and divine guidance
inspiring blistering, glorifying hymns
punishing, and withering edicts
totally tubular proclamations pronouncing
matter of fact, unquestioned imposed fealty
larger than life persona, endowed
crowned, and accorded self  supremacy,
where even divine
cosmic consciousness bows
and trembles acquiescing

toward ornery primate,
whose self crafted patriarchal
mandates imposed unquestioned vows,
where punishment meted out if questioning
of authority appeared to furrow brows
allowing, enabling and providing
totalitarian usurper re: free will ordains wows
be uttered and furor
squelched via militaristic might,
whenever fuhrer didst rouse
the public to pay homage

(even if coerced, forced, and induced)
toward faux courtly house
of seized role of Caesar Augustus
enforcing abrogation,
whence sun t'will
dance and rise to douse
the chill from the dawn
early morn, and mother earth
will be delegated to serve
world wide wagstaff slow caucus
as surrogate spouse, parent, big brother.

Dictatorial modus operandi foisted
upon ******* up public enemy re:
guarding Visigothic, oligopolistic,
hedonistic, and cannibalistic
adopted heir of vested gentry
meted staked, and yoked
fancyfeast sovereignty
intolerant per crowd-sourced
crowing diehard fulminations
denouncing trick air re:
qua hoodwinked treaty
against opprobrious, serious
reign of terror breed

ding steely dang LifeLock
self proclaimed deity
czarist gnome *****
to be (habeas corpus) writ
since this anonymous
cloaked drafted ensign gainsays nothing
as one among populous proletariat
bound and gagged if I don't claim
tyranny rigged by bourgeoisie
and get hung drawn and quartered
as a dire warning damning social compact
left to rot in hell
as a capital one threatening misfit.

Postscript:

I started with the premise
and idea of constituting
the cult of personality worship,
but found thoughts trotting off
in another direction,
and thus felt obliged
to saddle and pony up to thine
predominant sad dulled end
product te deum!

— The End —