losing thoughts to the margins in
some great depression of creative
outlet. taking inked works from a
revered Shakespeare born of the
Moorish states, filling out cata-
combs of this one's entombed
thoughts. and pondering Paris
of some earlier century, how
those writers flocked together.
how this one loathes his current
centuries other writers.
and these, are we, birds of a feather?
flocking, so to be better caught
by twelve-gauge scatter shot?
perhaps we are of a generation
lost, with blinders grown thru years.
expats stranded in a sea of comp-
lacancy in isolation with warring
souls raising higher parapets for
safety? this one's soul may have
raised too high fortifications,
forcing attrition upon the inhab-
itants. this one's soul may have
slaughtered the others for fear
of a low-cat staring up to
the eyes of its King. and
lone heart-beat echoing off
solid stone walls built of mortar
mixed with sweat and tears from
desecrated - of the desolated - and
now forsaken culture only a
quarter-century out. this one's
dogma consisting of self-martying
psychopomps pre-proclaiming ..
     'I went out myself into
     an immortal body, and
     now I am not what I was
     before. Now born in mind.'
this one's canonized martyrs only
seeking migration and division.
seeking the Kepigori for hopes of
retrieving knowledge lost - placed
without qualm of forgetting - the
ancestors bore unto still setting
mounds of clay mixed blood. and
when finally set, when finally full-
formed, when finally upright and
springing forth the common know-
ledge which was taught once in
truth. and, now breaking in thought
while this one's hours rot, while this
one leaves an abrupt end.

We sat stupefied with the expats,
eyes wide open telling lies
between repeats of
La Bamba & Lady Grinning Soul.
Peter Gunn screamed sax
through the hypnotic-haze,
the place was a ******* rat hole.

Sticky seats smelt like
****, burnt toast & dead feet.
A one-ton greasy bartender
sat on a low stool,
drooled on his cigar
rather than smoking it.
He counted his dough
about every six minutes.

Shadows of waifish tired-women
floated by us like wispy-clouds.
With tricks hand-in-hand,
they moved in and out of
the proverbial back rooms,
an odor of primordial-slime hung.

This was what they called
the tropical-island high-life,
a swanky place where ten bucks
could get you an hour of *****-thrills.

It was actually a cheap-*** brothel
disguised as a night club,
tucked away somewhere
in the middle of nowhere,
the skankiest
of Never Never Lands.

It was by far,
the saddest place
I've ever visited on Earth.

When something snaps
The ****** all bolt
Dogs out the traps
We all collapse
Down the plughole
Like turned on taps
Jaded expats
Bourbon, poker
All throw craps
Black top hats
Line the road
Like mourning bats
Marital spats
Crystal prisms
Where love refracts
Wear navy slacks
Stare out to sea
As mars attacks
Nightmares hide facts
Flattened like focaccia
Under fifteen all-blacks
Fuss over Goldman sachs
You know we only blink
When it's the shirt on our backs

with natives, you emigrate you're an expat, but if you immigrate you'll hardly find a good word to replace expat - well, i have one... inpat - people speak fondly of expats, that heroism of the English having tea with Mussolini... ever hear the self-told story on inpats? you hardly do, all you know is that the first generation wants bleach, bad, so the next generation can say: british born, british bred, and dumb-fool the question of accents.*

it all started with everyone trying to be a social media guru -
a blatant jinx, only a few "chosen" ones could become
brand machines that could become
living embodiment(s) of advertising plateaus,
who'd sing you a song from an advert than
a Hey Joe by Hendrix or Hey Jude by the
Beatles, only a select few - and there they
are, moaning about a pristine benefit system
to raise their families of about 15 while
the cockroach professions in factories go
unnoticed - well, sorry for turning poetry
into politics, but if i won't, no one else will,
they'll be gagging each other anally with other
"essentials", about love come and love missed -
poetry is an abstract canvas, it allows
anyone to narrate or to personify, it basically
allows narration like no other medium -
politicising in the poetic realm isn't bad,
Ezra has hamstrung and quartered last time i heard,
spent a good deal in an asylum trying to prove
that a patriotic flame was instilled in him -
i don't do dust on a cupboard shelf love ****,
i don't do "you better watch your vocabulary"
nonsense, it's, non-, essential, justifiably missed
or unattainable, yes, but essential? not really.
you can practice on a mannequin,
but on an organic free-wheeler? not really.
along with the angst and along with the mishaps,
learn to walk, style it, stride... **** sake's
try imitating the bowling approach in an alley
with a kingpin and 10 dumb ***** -
the more you see cursing the less the images become,
i swear to god, i'd rather see a throng of a 100 men
cursing without censorship than see all the devastation
from mindless and sexless acts to claim
a supremacy of power - i'd see less dyslexics too!
tell them you want to spell, tell them you
want to get back the U and C back rather than see
a **** pushed through a tennis-net chequers flag
while some poor-**** goody-two-shoes gets decapitated
in Iraq... please! this is becoming a sadomasochism
for me stressing the point!

Cava

We’ll order cava in smallish glasses
from the café with wispy tables on
the plaza pocked with sunburnt bullet holes

sprayed from the hips of passionate men
sporting snap brimmed hats dipped low on one side,
veiled arched shooting eyes righteous, unblinking,

dark slots that screened smoke from hand rolled
cigarettes, great-grandfathers perhaps to
our waiter and the fellow seated

at a table for two embroiled in a lilt
pas de deux that seems friendly enough to
a pair of short term expats who don’t speak

the lingo but savor it’s tuneful swing,
the parry and ****** of slender hands, pairs
of small deft birds winging this way and that

until one brace breaks off with a flourish
to nestle beneath a tray of smallish
glasses that lifts and soars, borne off on the

salty breeze while the other two alight
around a beaded glass of cava and
a lazy smoke, time marked in wispy whorls.

native? native what? explain that to an 8-year-old colt, who started to acquire a foreign language, and then speak to him... 13 years later... mind you, the shame that's english tourism, which should ask the basic minimum of bilingualism, or at least enough charm, to attract an italian / canadian beauty, once in paris, to speak french for you... oddly enough? the english are not big on the charm offensive when it comes to foreign girls... the only charm they seem to ooze is the fact that they're mono-lingual, and have a stinking fat piece of pork leather, filled with money gained from content-professions, that, really... really do make the chinese look twice as useful: and in the "garden" of paradise that is: hände spreschen zweimal wie schnell wie die zunge (hands speak twice as fast as the tongue): and also leave the mind with more peace to cherish, as the waggling tongue ever left the mind to fathom.

my english neighbours have this
problem with me:
they hate the idea that i'm
actually expressing the mortality
bound to my lack of sometimes
"necessary" control...
  no matter the **** that my sikh
neighbour kills my cat...
that's not a problem...
it's that i drink and sometimes manage
to wolf-cry-fowl into the night...
no matter she's almost 50, and he's past
50 aiming at 60, and it's only
now that they decided to have their
little down syndrome taxpayer's
money-making machine...
you know, i've been using this language
since the age of 8, but i never managed
to move beyond that age of thinking,
i'm the same old still annoying
8-year-old,
   but i guess that's why the english
call english immigrants *expats
rather than immigrants...
  sounds a bit better, i might add...
       well, of course it would...
   in unity is our strength,
      tomorrow? i'm gonna be competing
with some govinda's ***** over
a curry...
    i'm thinking: better find me a recipe
involving mint!
then again my english neighbour is
a complete engslosh...
            something worth ******* on...
and i'd gladly **** on him and then ask him
asking me:
            has is truly rained?
you tell me, you had the audacity to
bring back the monsoon crowd,
so? so stop moaning that you felt
that you didn't see it coming!
        what a ******...
                i once had a respect for these people,
but then they started treating me
like a cinnamon bunny, or a chocolate soup
franchise...
       i once had great respect for these people,
then i spent 3 years in scotland
and started thinking like a mongrel pict...
who are these people who are asking for
deserved respect? can't find them...
      i don't like the **** ******* wannabe
wholesaler: do i ******* look like
a chimpanzee, readied for a lesson in
english arithmetic circus antics?
what, a, *******, ****...
               i'm only going to say this once,
i'm siding with the russian um?
             it has gone way past deciding whether
they deserve it or not...
    i just hate that my father has to mind
having to ask whether he has down
syndrome, because he doesn't have a ****
accent...
         ****** please, you think i'm going
to ***** at empathy over rotherham?
really? you breed dumb girls, you
get dumb & ****** over girls...
              otherwise? tomorrow i'm going
to be cooking two curries...
hence i asked for four tins of chopped
tomatoes, and i'm starting to qualify mint
as a competitive ingredient...
        i'm just bored of the racism...
i'm really having to compete to associate
myself with it:
  white v. white racism takes more
gymnastics, it's not as easy when you're
not... "suntanned"...
   you have to nibble on the details...
   namely? the flattened part of the fusion
of the parietal & the occipital bones...
akin to the turks... as noted to me in
an arts class in school... by a lovely blonde girl...
as jung noted in the 20th century,
so i too note in the 21st century:
western europe is more of an echo-chamber
than before,
   which never believes in the existence
of central europe...
  believing that there is such a bloc known
to be eastern, never minding that
the east is tickling the ural mountains,
and no state, in particular;
can't help but think these peoples are
arrogant *****,
          and not dissolve their just
partake with their masochistic mission of
past deeds as having:
disgruntling after-effects...
     the problem is?
they don't want to blame their forefathers,
and they don't want to blame themselves...
              no wonder we're the witness to
the ouroboros effect...
sure as **** philip zimbardo didn't write
a book about that,
     but i have: having written a pre-scriptum.

all my poems are expats
cast out from my language
from the way of speaking
in which i order coffee
in which i tell my sister
that i love her

it's hard to say why
maybe it's that
it's harder on the rhythm
or there's a smaller audience
and it's nice to be heard sometimes

but there's something else
i lied
i don't really tell my sister
that i love her
in my language

for so many years
it's been a language
that was stuck in my throat
when it was so hard to say
anything

i don't know whether
sapir and whorf were right
with their linguistic relativity theory
but i know i can only speak about
what's really inside of me
while outside of me

from a distance of a whole dictionary

Expats, foreign workers, people
who are stuck, stay and continue

dreaming of a free life
as shepherds and cattle lords
in their own country
of grassy meadows, milk, and honey
the old promise

The young men long
for the beautiful girls
of the north
while they do the work here
in the delta, where they feel at home

in the stories
of the ancient god who created the world
with thoughts from his heart, living
words from his mouth, the Potter
who molded man

stories
that mold their souls, giving some light
when it is dark in their hearts
filled with old ash in which still glows
the fire of the Destroyer

Once Aron was born in France, in Paris,
In an official family as Franςois- Marie.
A literary world was closer to his
Soul. Don’t confuse him with Walter that’s Henri.

He began his literary path in aristocrats’
House, covering  with mockery, satires—
For this then he joined the number of expats,
His annual income was twenty thousand Lires.

He did live in England for three years
Never to be forgotten, studying poems, prose.
But then Voltaire belonged to that sort of persons
Who could not find his moorage in Britain, of course.

And thus he lived: wandering, returning,
France’s spirit lured him as before. He was
So tired for many years of wandering,
And bought the estate in Geneva’s outskirts.

And Voltaire settled there living in
Boarding- houses off noble ladies, nobles’
All kinds, his income was grey, although he knew laws,
And was admitted to monarchs their match being.

And when at eighty he came back to Paris,
And there he passed to his rest further,
In Paris you can never avoid love’s bliss,
Here lived Voltaire, a poet, a philosopher.
{2019}    

ВОЛЬТЕР

Родился Аруэ во Франции, в Париже.
В чиновничьей семье как Франсуа-Мари.
Литературы мир ему был права ближе.
Не путайте его с Вальтером, что Анри!

Литературный путь в домах аристократов
Он начал проходить с насмешек и сатир –
За это он примкнул потом к числу экспатов,
И годовой доход был двести тысяч лир!

Он в Англии прожил три незабвенных года:
Политику, стихи и прозу изучал.
Но таковой была вольтерова порода,
Что не обрёл тогда в Британии причал.

И жил он так: скитаясь-возвращаясь:
Дух Франции его по-прежнему манил.
За многие года он так устал, скитаясь:
В Женеве как-то раз имение купил.

И там осел Вольтер, живя на пансионах
От благородных дам и всяческих вельмож.
И серый был доход, хоть ведал он в законах –
Равнее равных ты, когда к монархам вхож!

Но в восемьдесят лет вернулся он в столицу.
И там он опочил потом на склоне лет.
В Париж нельзя никак, приехав, не влюбиться!
Здесь жил Вольтер – философ и поэт!
{11.11.2019}

Translator - I. Toporov

I don't need to learn your language as I'm just visiting here
I know the words I need chips and egg and beer.
Drunk all night asleep all day there is only ever we and never us.
But come to "Our England" and you have to be one of us.
Expats colonise and open bars for brits.
But over here in England don't dare be yourself.
Why can't you speak English, you're not a refugee.
Go back to were you came from.
I can't it's blown to bits!

I heard that Dr Johnny Bananas
signed off on a letter on herd immunity
and *******, I’m in

Last seen fleeing a beat up
Chunking Mansion room
after a deal for python skins
(needed for his surefast oil) went bad,
his mad streak nearly had him

This was after that narrow squeak in Singapore, when peddling stay hard pills to rotten expats got dicey, as they realised his concoction
was more talc than tungsten
and some Salakau took a machete interest

So the enigmatic Dr B has resurfaced
in Great Barrington, Mass.
to add his voice to the Ivy League Profs, homeopaths and khoomii singers’
hard nosed exhortations
to stop worrying and love the fever,
persistent cough,
anosmia

If life has taught us anything
it’s that when Dr Johnny B spins
fresh from Whitehall or White House
with advice for living well,
you can take that to the offshore bank.
I’m sold

Hector is a lonely agent working for the CIA
Deployed to Angola, of all places
On a mission to recruit
The hangout for expats in Luanda
Is the Come Back Inn
The agency was looking for someone who would not arouse suspicion
He was also looking for love
Hmm, he espied a comely lass dressed in white, with a string pearls accuenting that beautiful neck
Can I buy you a drink?” he found easy to say
Marcy smiled and nodded yes
They were on their way
Doctors Without Borders had placed her there, she revealed
She was that kind of a good old soul
Dinner followed, then came a kiss
They were on a roll
It took a while for Hector to reveal
What he really did
He wasn’t a journalist after all
Did she like the adventurous life?
That sounded pretty good to her
She asked if he needed a wife
That sounded pretty good to him
Dateline: today
They live in a treehouse in Zambia
Baby is on the way
She’s still doing the MD thing
As for Hector, it’s a secret
So I cannot say

Exiled In Thrive
Exiled colonizers
Are fighters so wild –
And narrow neither,
Nor barrow wide

Can stop their hopeless-
Ness on their way:
Ambiguous prowls
Breathe day after day...

Those zombies a nation
Come there to pose:
What passed not to mention
And blasts make to toss

Colonial fringes
Will cut and conform
Those bled “aborigines”
Who learn to adore…

Uprooted be *****!
Shells out from seeds! –
Not buying or selling
Shall roses and weeds

Be now in mingling
Of petals alive:
Expansion of dwindling –
Expats be in thrive!..