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INSTEAD OF A PREFACE

During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, I
spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues in
Leningrad. One day, somehow, someone 'picked me out'.
On that occasion there was a woman standing behind me,
her lips blue with cold, who, of course, had never in
her life heard my name. Jolted out of the torpor
characteristic of all of us, she said into my ear
(everyone whispered there) - 'Could one ever describe
this?' And I answered - 'I can.' It was then that
something like a smile slid across what had previously
been just a face.
[The 1st of April in the year 1957. Leningrad]

DEDICATION

Mountains fall before this grief,
A mighty river stops its flow,
But prison doors stay firmly bolted
Shutting off the convict burrows
And an anguish close to death.
Fresh winds softly blow for someone,
Gentle sunsets warm them through; we don't know this,
We are everywhere the same, listening
To the scrape and turn of hateful keys
And the heavy tread of marching soldiers.
Waking early, as if for early mass,
Walking through the capital run wild, gone to seed,
We'd meet - the dead, lifeless; the sun,
Lower every day; the Neva, mistier:
But hope still sings forever in the distance.
The verdict. Immediately a flood of tears,
Followed by a total isolation,
As if a beating heart is painfully ripped out, or,
Thumped, she lies there brutally laid out,
But she still manages to walk, hesitantly, alone.
Where are you, my unwilling friends,
Captives of my two satanic years?
What miracle do you see in a Siberian blizzard?
What shimmering mirage around the circle of the moon?
I send each one of you my salutation, and farewell.
[March 1940]

INTRODUCTION
[PRELUDE]

It happened like this when only the dead
Were smiling, glad of their release,
That Leningrad hung around its prisons
Like a worthless emblem, flapping its piece.
Shrill and sharp, the steam-whistles sang
Short songs of farewell
To the ranks of convicted, demented by suffering,
As they, in regiments, walked along -
Stars of death stood over us
As innocent Russia squirmed
Under the blood-spattered boots and tyres
Of the black marias.

I

You were taken away at dawn. I followed you
As one does when a corpse is being removed.
Children were crying in the darkened house.
A candle flared, illuminating the Mother of God. . .
The cold of an icon was on your lips, a death-cold
sweat
On your brow - I will never forget this; I will gather

To wail with the wives of the murdered streltsy (1)
Inconsolably, beneath the Kremlin towers.
[1935. Autumn. Moscow]

II

Silent flows the river Don
A yellow moon looks quietly on
Swanking about, with cap askew
It sees through the window a shadow of you
Gravely ill, all alone
The moon sees a woman lying at home
Her son is in jail, her husband is dead
Say a prayer for her instead.

III

It isn't me, someone else is suffering. I couldn't.
Not like this. Everything that has happened,
Cover it with a black cloth,
Then let the torches be removed. . .
Night.

IV

Giggling, poking fun, everyone's darling,
The carefree sinner of Tsarskoye Selo (2)
If only you could have foreseen
What life would do with you -
That you would stand, parcel in hand,
Beneath the Crosses (3), three hundredth in
line,
Burning the new year's ice
With your hot tears.
Back and forth the prison poplar sways
With not a sound - how many innocent
Blameless lives are being taken away. . .
[1938]

V

For seventeen months I have been screaming,
Calling you home.
I've thrown myself at the feet of butchers
For you, my son and my horror.
Everything has become muddled forever -
I can no longer distinguish
Who is an animal, who a person, and how long
The wait can be for an execution.
There are now only dusty flowers,
The chinking of the thurible,
Tracks from somewhere into nowhere
And, staring me in the face
And threatening me with swift annihilation,
An enormous star.
[1939]

VI

Weeks fly lightly by. Even so,
I cannot understand what has arisen,
How, my son, into your prison
White nights stare so brilliantly.
Now once more they burn,
Eyes that focus like a hawk,
And, upon your cross, the talk
Is again of death.
[1939. Spring]

VII
THE VERDICT

The word landed with a stony thud
Onto my still-beating breast.
Nevermind, I was prepared,
I will manage with the rest.

I have a lot of work to do today;
I need to slaughter memory,
Turn my living soul to stone
Then teach myself to live again. . .

But how. The hot summer rustles
Like a carnival outside my window;
I have long had this premonition
Of a bright day and a deserted house.
[22 June 1939. Summer. Fontannyi Dom (4)]

VIII
TO DEATH

You will come anyway - so why not now?
I wait for you; things have become too hard.
I have turned out the lights and opened the door
For you, so simple and so wonderful.
Assume whatever shape you wish. Burst in
Like a shell of noxious gas. Creep up on me
Like a practised bandit with a heavy weapon.
Poison me, if you want, with a typhoid exhalation,
Or, with a simple tale prepared by you
(And known by all to the point of nausea), take me
Before the commander of the blue caps and let me
glimpse
The house administrator's terrified white face.
I don't care anymore. The river Yenisey
Swirls on. The Pole star blazes.
The blue sparks of those much-loved eyes
Close over and cover the final horror.
[19 August 1939. Fontannyi Dom]

IX

Madness with its wings
Has covered half my soul
It feeds me fiery wine
And lures me into the abyss.

That's when I understood
While listening to my alien delirium
That I must hand the victory
To it.

However much I nag
However much I beg
It will not let me take
One single thing away:

Not my son's frightening eyes -
A suffering set in stone,
Or prison visiting hours
Or days that end in storms

Nor the sweet coolness of a hand
The anxious shade of lime trees
Nor the light distant sound
Of final comforting words.
[14 May 1940. Fontannyi Dom]

X
CRUCIFIXION

Weep not for me, mother.
I am alive in my grave.

1.
A choir of angels glorified the greatest hour,
The heavens melted into flames.
To his father he said, 'Why hast thou forsaken me!'
But to his mother, 'Weep not for me. . .'
[1940. Fontannyi Dom]

2.
Magdalena smote herself and wept,
The favourite disciple turned to stone,
But there, where the mother stood silent,
Not one person dared to look.
[1943. Tashkent]

EPILOGUE

1.
I have learned how faces fall,
How terror can escape from lowered eyes,
How suffering can etch cruel pages
Of cuneiform-like marks upon the cheeks.
I know how dark or ash-blond strands of hair
Can suddenly turn white. I've learned to recognise
The fading smiles upon submissive lips,
The trembling fear inside a hollow laugh.
That's why I pray not for myself
But all of you who stood there with me
Through fiercest cold and scorching July heat
Under a towering, completely blind red wall.

2.
The hour has come to remember the dead.
I see you, I hear you, I feel you:
The one who resisted the long drag to the open window;
The one who could no longer feel the kick of familiar
soil beneath her feet;
The one who, with a sudden flick of her head, replied,

'I arrive here as if I've come home!'
I'd like to name you all by name, but the list
Has been removed and there is nowhere else to look.
So,
I have woven you this wide shroud out of the humble
words
I overheard you use. Everywhere, forever and always,
I will never forget one single thing. Even in new
grief.
Even if they clamp shut my tormented mouth
Through which one hundred million people scream;
That's how I wish them to remember me when I am dead
On the eve of my remembrance day.
If someone someday in this country
Decides to raise a memorial to me,
I give my consent to this festivity
But only on this condition - do not build it
By the sea where I was born,
I have severed my last ties with the sea;
Nor in the Tsar's Park by the hallowed stump
Where an inconsolable shadow looks for me;
Build it here where I stood for three hundred hours
And no-one slid open the bolt.
Listen, even in blissful death I fear
That I will forget the Black Marias,
Forget how hatefully the door slammed and an old woman
Howled like a wounded beast.
Let the thawing ice flow like tears
From my immovable bronze eyelids
And let the prison dove coo in the distance
While ships sail quietly along the river.
[March 1940. Fontannyi Dom]

FOOTNOTES

1 An elite guard which rose up in rebellion
   against Peter the Great in 1698. Most were either
   executed or exiled.
2 The imperial summer residence outside St
   Petersburg where Ahmatova spent her early years.
3 A prison complex in central Leningrad near the
   Finland Station, called The Crosses because of the
   shape of two of the buildings.
4 The Leningrad house in which Ahmatova lived.


First published Sasha Soldatow Mayakovsky in Bondi
BlackWattle Press 1993 Sydney.
Last nite I dreamed of T.S. Eliot
welcoming me to the land of dream
Sofas couches fog in England
Tea in his digs Chelsea rainbows
curtains on his windows, fog seeping in
the chimney but a nice warm house
and an incredibly sweet hooknosed
Eliot he loved me, put me up,
gave me a couch to sleep on,
conversed kindly, took me serious
asked my opinion on Mayakovsky
I read him Corso Creeley Kerouac
advised Burroughs Olson Huncke
the bearded lady in the Zoo, the
intelligent puma in Mexico City
6 chorus boys from Zanzibar
who chanted in wornout polygot
Swahili, and the rippling rythyms
of Ma Rainey and Vachel Lindsay.
On the Isle of the Queen
we had a long evening's conversation
Then he tucked me in my long
red underwear under a silken
blanket by the fire on the sofa
gave me English Hottie
and went off sadly to his bed,
Saying ah Ginsberg I am glad
to have met a fine young man like you.
At last, I woke ashamed of myself.
Is he that good and kind? Am I that great?
What's my motive dreaming his
manna? What English Department
would that impress? What failure
to be perfect prophet's made up here?
I dream of my kindness to T.S. Eliot
wanting to be a historical poet
and share in his finance of Imagery-
overambitious dream of eccentric boy.
God forbid my evil dreams come true.
Last nite I dreamed of Allen Ginsberg.
T.S. Eliot would've been ashamed of me.
Dreams of Sepia Jul 2015
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
Brought up abroad, I'm constantly caught between two cultures.
This poem is also poignant because of the conflict that is going on in the Ukraine now, which ignores the historical relationship between Russians & the Ukranians, which was mostly amicable.
AP Staunton Jan 2016
My books are piled in the Hallway,
The Girlfriend wants me out,
She can keep all the household cargo
the insecurities and doubt.

I don't care much for chrome Toasters
Just give me my Damon Runyon,
Brendan Behan, James Joyce, Ernest Hemmingway,
Jack Kerouac and Jack London.

Albert Camus, Seamus Heaney, Patrick Kavanagh
Mayakovsky and Roger McGough,
the Steamer, bread -maker, Asparagus- spearer
Are all yours, I'm ******* off.

Just give me a dozen or so boxes,
Not those ***** looks,
Your welcome to the giant fridge-freezer,
All I want, are my books
Kim Jong Il Oct 2012
I printed out America
I looked it up on youtube
And I lost it.

Where are you, America?
Did you hide under my communistically red bed sheets?
You’re not there

Are you the piece of paper under my ****?
No, that's another Ginsbergian poem full of soul and extra brilliant kindness.
Are you on my wall?
No, Baudelaire and Mayakovsky turn their heads in disagreement.

Are you one of the leafs in my room of poetry leaf fall?
Do you lie sublimely on my shelf along Nabokov and Turgenev?
Or are you the paper I left on the table in a rush?

Do you lie scrambled in my bin?
I know you never would
Or perhaps the wind took you away
And you forgot to wave?

America, I put my queer hands down in desperation.
* The poem is "America" by Allen Ginsberg
Johnny Noiπ Apr 2018
he's trying to spell like a painting
painting w/ his eyes closed; slash

ing

thick dark forest green  back & forth
w/ house paint on a prepared canvas;

he's got a calling
inspired by Russian Constructivsim
Malevich & Rodchenko, Popova
& Mayakovsky tying & untying words

to spell out a cubist alphabet
like constructing Mondrians in 3D;

talking computer geometrically insane
Miro; ******, always ******
Lawrence Hall Jul 2024
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Macbeth, Doctor Zhivago, Captain Call, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Allen Ginsberg, and Rod McKuen Visit the Dentist but Have to Wait for Beowulf's Root Canal

         In gratitude for all the wonderful dentists, hygienists, and
                       technicians who keep us chewing!


                                  Macbeth Visits the Dentist

Is this a drill which I see before me
The whirring drill outstretched to my teeth
O happiest gas! Come let me clutch thee!
Before my body I throw my dental shield


                            Dr. Zhivago Visits the Dentist

Poor dental hygiene is for crowds of mediocrities
Only individuals seek dentistry
And they shun those who tolerate bad teeth
How many things in the world deserve our loyalty?

A dentist whose papers are in order


                            Captain Call Visits the Dentist

Call saw that the dentist was looking at him
The nitrous oxide drained out of him
Leaving him feeling tired
“I hate a bad tooth. I won’t tolerate it.”


                 Yevgeny Yevtushenko Visits the Dentist

For a tooth to come out
Some of the pain must be devoted to Stalin
Soviet dentistry demanded happy endings
I knew I could floss and brush better than Mayakovsky
Bella’s teeth were second only to those of Akhmatova
Only I could make Babi Yar all about me and my teeth
When I saw a dentist in Zima Junction
I saw the truth of the Revolution in her little mirror


                     Allen Ginsberg Visits the Dentist

I saw the best teeth of my generation destroyed by sugared sodas and a failure to brush and floss

dragging themselves through the medical complex at dawn looking for a fix

thinning-hair old hipsters burning for relief from aching jaws at the healing hands of dedicated professionals among their shining instruments

dedicated professionals who did not drop out of the University of Arkansas and never saw Mohammedan angels among the rooftops


                                   Rod McKuen Visits the Dentist

I am like a molar; I have chewed alone
Gnawed a hundred hamburgers
Never found a bone
Still and all I’m toothy
Reason is you see
Once in a while along the way
Dentists have been good to me.
Dentistry and literature!
Johnny Noiπ Dec 2017
A micro-black hole in super-infinite space,
Anne Frank preaching the Promised Land
To millennials born in exile,
Worshipping Bob Marley in Babylon
Waiting for Christ to take out the trash;
Keep waiting
She knew nothing of the Bible,
Didn’t know she was a Jew---gay, straight or terrorist,
Dialectical materialism clashing with the Holy Trinity
In the neutron stars’ collision of
What we call density in space at the end of super-gravity,
No endings anymore: the singularity is us:
the negative to the photograph---

Black holes shake the spacetime sisterhood
with bigger and bigger gravity waves
Until the universe shatters like a snow globe---
Soviet ******, Russian princess bride
designating the next phase of your honor;
She’s my Soviet sister, mister
Design your press for Putin’s world-wide wedding
Desire is divine when the world is in calamity---
Soviet mothers live in the sewer
Below Sonya’s ***, her pomegranates
On the cottage table she belongs to no man but me,
My bride from the mist---

Parmenides agreeing with Euclid in bliss with a good cigar---
The ice in your eyes may be cool
Because Elton feels it (we all feel it)
Your great-uncle was a **** spy not Ai Wei Wei’s father
Like Mao Zedong, the great poet
Of the Cultural Revolution forbidden
To write made to pull a plow
Don’t lie about it,
Proud he wanted to pound ur ***---

Soviet princess, I wish to know u like a father,
There is snow and there is now---
Riding the bride raw in a Russian tradition,
Tsunami women in boxers
With an eyeful of throat,
Candy-eyes in her waistline,
In her middle earth contours
I who am that poet whom
Is the feline shadow shape sharp as a tail of tall chords
Twisting in the gravity shifts
The wind is shallow now, who looks like that---
Her American-Turkish mother
Who began to fish behind the lines
Her fat *** in boxers a woman:
Pin-uposophy the science of hummingbirds
And the dramatic decline of bees,
The saucer flips and trips through space---
Listening to Wagner, discussing Nietzsche
Glorifying white womanhood
Burning the bunny and ******* flag---
She goes where her cloned colon goes---
Ivy-eyed in Hamburg; New Zealand;
Cryogenic ******* designed for living testicles---
Glorifying wormholes and supernova---
I like that

The neutron star exploding you can feel it
Men have been ****** children since time began
In what appears to be human nature---
Transgender crime boss turned informant
Gunned down on the operating table,
Transcendental Idealist Plato invites Diogenes
Out for a drink in the Golden Age
With Bunny Yeager, the beginning of ugly beauty queens,
Not the first, Russian history going far back in time...
Ask Vartuhi about Pushkin
She will tell you abstractly,
*** trafficking and harassment are one thing,
New York, London, Milan, Tokyo, Paris
Guilty of ****** assault against men and women---
Heartless tgirls getting plastic surgery to become
Teen ****** and slutty wives looking hot
In 1920, the year I took the Polish girl in the ***
And saw her future,
The scientist moonlighting as a shocking stripper
known throughout Europe
What is unknown to the aliens
Is I will move to Bulgaria or Bagdad
And close the windows on
Naked neutron **** flappers
and other strippers of long ago;
The Nazis have never been forgotten
For good reason---
The myths they made were picked up in the street---
This thing just talks and keeps talking
With no time for ******* ****---
A poem is not a song, a poet is not king
Or president or Aung San Suu Kyi
Or Robert Mugabe or Kim Il Sung
Or Kim jong Un or Carl Jung
Or Sigmund Freud or Joseph Stalin---
Playing sports in a warzone,
Not a figurehead or martyr,
This is not mathematics or a game of chance;
Your AI is smarter than you are---
The Golden Age of Anarcho-Nihilism
The vocabulary of ants and giants,
Say u saw the 7 stars and pray---
Absurdo-Futurism blah blah blah
U know kids are on drugs
Ur heroes alcoholic predators,
Nothing goes unchanged, it’s human nature
U can’t arrest someone for being human;
Do not cast moral aspersions
When you cannot defend your own actions---
Ur father was a ****** *****,
Ur mother god only knows---
Mayakovsky and Whitman met on the pier,
Rupaul's liquor bottles floating in shark infested water
Although he doesn’t drink or smoke---
Do you know him? Mao Zedong, Adolf ******,
Donald Trump lacking essential brain chemistry
Producing a brainless sadist
In an American cultural revolution,
An open attack on intellectual history;
In the future there will be no ideas, LGBTQ-etc.
Christian Conservatism left or right---

Which one are u? ****** harassment does not exist
When anyone accused is guilty---

Christian intuition says there is a paradise,
That is, paradise compared to this dump---
Now science is telling us the same thing,
The Infinite Singularity of Eternal Paradise

Growing flowers in a tin-can
In the shadow of the black hole and sky’s end
I have no interest in Magic Realism
And completely reject Surrealism---
I want to write floating prosody,
That is prose that takes place
In heaven and/or hell, not this world;
Anyone who can comprehend Cubism
Can grasp the multiverse---
Futurism, Suprematism,
Abstract Expressionism,
Constructivism, quantum theory---
Things working along the lines
Of the Higgs field,
Wherefore the mind can transcend
Mere three-dimensional
Thinking like Einstein, Freud and/or Dylan---
Something about YHWH---
The abstract One a Neo-Platonic concept
Derived from Plato’s ideal forms; Jung’s archetypes
And Freud’s unconscious (Jung’s subconscious)
What Einstein called relativity most people call reality
That can be manipulated by poetry or music.

Man and *** is like a cop with a gun;
Sooner or later they’re going to use it
***** bullet fires ****** bullet wound bleeds---
The pendulum swings
Between being and non-being and/or becoming
And unbecoming, but the wound pre-exists
The bullet in a tachyonic temporal reversal
Of patriarchy and matriarchy,
The Saudi royal family deposed and replaced
by a string of democratically elected female presidents;
Which will become the first female dictatorship of the new era;
There will be others, mothers and such,
***-camps perpetuating the politically correct species,
So cries the Jewish poet before he is ******
By the wayward women who rule the toilet-state---
The bald-headed ***** with nice ***, nameless Empress,
Spurring the underground Machismo movement;
Men with guns who want to replace all other women
With their oriental counterparts---
“I dreamed of a world
               Of only Asian women and men of every color!”

The baritone Bible banned, all men Christ---
Our women Christian not Jewish or Muslim
Our poets banned lest they speak micro-aggressions;
I am one, outlaw unlike my brothers who bow
At the feet I once scaled like mountains,
She is waiting at the top with a Bible in hand
She can’t read or understand
As it makes no sense to her female brain;
She only knows deception like the old KGB,
obvious by the accent I can’t understand---
Israel gone, Palestine soon follows.
Burqinis on the beach and in the street,
Leggings and funky sneakers,
Her pores open by hot yoga;
So cries the Jewish poet before he’s ****** to death
I heard the prophet wail like Mayakovsky
The red, white and black the colors of no flag---
Most of the ants doing nothing;
Most fascists dull-witted mediocrities,
I saw her waving the red-white-&-black
In the Nollywood invasion of collective castration
Of the male species as if we were wild animals
Women directors taking out insurance but not in Iran---
Which is ruled by an old man;
What will the saudis say
When the supreme leader is a woman at last---
The red guard will end like Quadaffi’s bodyguards
I’ll have a Russian lover, I’ll have an Indian lover,
But I won’t have a Muslim lover
And don’t want one although I thought I did at one time---
Not only priests are rapists,
The average guy is a ****
Every man is a saint
And what does that make u, *****?
A *****. ****, *****, ashamed? of what?
Nothing since u jump out of our clothes
At the smell of money;
Most people deep as mud;
Their words half-forgotten poetry
Maybe it rhymes or not,
Catholic and/or Protestant
As the sun comes up on a cloudy day during mass---
Call no man father or master or brother---
The Jewish poet is ur brother,
No man is ur master
Except Hermes or Prometheus or Pythagoras
No man is ur father dancing
To mother’s organic music,
Her milk flowing from her 1,000 *******
Call no man mother and no woman father
White noise background radiation prayer
Building a great pyramid by randomly piling stones
One atop another that fly---her father,
Her uncle, her brother not related to me---
The blonde girl running on the beach at dawn
Is not a goddess---
The witch-hunt of powerful influential men
Who can’t keep their hands to themselves
Is destroying the vulture before it can be born
As the Enlightenment and Renaissance
Went down in flames like the Roman Empire
And what is left but dreamers led by Jesus
And his angels and saints---

As the pit opens beneath barefoot ballrooms
She falls into Hades never to return
With her foreign accent she’s a ****** as am I---
How can she take the sacrament
With her fingers shoved in her ****?
When Jesus returns I want to be ******;
I’m not going to heaven w/o a cigarette;
My lover the flapper taking away my sin;
This bread this cup my breakfast---
The priest speaks to the black hole
As if it were alive forgetting the supersupernova
And neutron stars that begin spacetime
At the end of all things that shall come again;
Passing away again in timespace---
There are no more pure virgins only gods in their wisdom
***** ******* pure---
***** mothers better than clean mothers---
Money raining from uber-clouds;
Nollywood semi-virgins living with the pain
Of genital mutilation,
Everybody is writing poetry these days
Inspired by children that can barely spell
The words inspired by adults
That don’t know poetry from ****,
Who can’t rhyme without hip-hop
In the background---

The wooden poet meets the burqini beauty queen
On the beach in the rain and wind---
Feet caked with mud, swirling black holes
crashing and exploding like cars in Jerusalem
again and again until LIGO picks up the vibration
And tells the world---
What can gravity waves do that a terrorist can’t?
Gravity waves give women ****;
Have you ever seen an australopithecus female?
They are not pretty unless u love animals as do I,
even a Neanderthal woman won’t **** me;
O - I am the prophet who leapt upon horseback
and rode like fire into battle a man of war.
Women are worn-out cliches
Cries the Soviet poet who lives and breathes
In the underworld made of oak;
Do not envy evil gay men---
A prophet at dawn sleeps with men,
Army and navy and Marines---
And I pour out my spirit like flesh
remembering her earthen blood,
The moon darkened by the Christ child’s name;
A girl sold for wine to drink I will mold like clay---
Your body beaten into a wooden sword
In the Bronze Age.

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him,
She just wants to dance and so she shall
The anarcho-nihilist absurdo-futurist cult
Of the Soviet fembot buried in the ghost city,
Don’t go there, the radiation lingers
In the baritone voice of one who returns;
Where the old women will not **** me
Like I’ve seen them do to others---
Young girls won’t **** me like their mothers will---
Anger leading to evil in the ghost city
Jonah went to Nineveh
And told the Ninevites to go **** themselves---
No Jews were insulted, no women *****,
God laughs at the wicked,
Their swords pierce their own hearts---
The wicked shall vanish and beauty shall fade;
In the field of eternity it shall be scattered
Like smoke by the wind---
All good things come from gravity waves
Women grow **** and men grow big *****
They mate and are fruitful,
I built a fembot and named her Sonya and she became a poet
And made me a lot of money; she was that good.
Word Hobo Nov 2018
Look!
now they sleep      bloodless warriors
pandemonium stilled      agony slain tranquil
death sanctified in rigid cartesian rows
honored for their sacrifice and selfless valiance
laid to rest beneath mourning grasses

Ask!
where was the higher honor due them      before war
are sacred vows      to be profaned      to be misemployed
                            
Why!
do once verdurous lives lay cold and pulseless
as spatters of red petals      tearfully fall
families breathing wistful flowers
distilling rue      with lulling scents

Adjudge!
all men      who enact lies
dishonoring crossed graves
greed calibrating scales of injustice
bodies tilted high by tonnages of gold
Aurelian kisses      vaulting wars riches

Do Not!
dishonor a warrior’s willingness to die
for bravados mouth is a soldier’s tomb
do not forsake truth and honor    our only faithful ally
ask ten-thousand whys      before one soldier dies
before the bugler's breath      sounds death's lamenting cries

Think!
Contemplate war’s fiery womb
hatred    born inextinguishable
good & evil     indistinguishable

Look, what stillborn bones lie locked in battle
this fleshless monster      we mis-named peace        


gv.2014


Matthew 6:13 . . . deliver us from “evil”
Evil as translated in 6:13 is "Poneros" A name also attributed to Satan
Which means:  "he is not content unless drawing others into the same destruction as himself"
(From Lexicon to the New Testament by Spiros Zodhiates, TH.D

"Soon
the world
won’t have a rib intact.
And its soul will be pulled out."

A line from Vladimir Mayakovsky's 1917 poem , Call To Account

“They made a wasteland and called it peace” Publius Cornelius Tacitus
Johnny Noiπ Aug 2018
[                                                    rad·i·cal/ˈradək(ə)l/adjective:
radical
1.  m-           (especially of change or action)
                               relating
  to affect the fundamental
          nature of something;                                 far-reaching or thorough [      
                               ] "a radical overhaul          of the existing framework"
             synonyms:    [          ]                            thorough-going, thorough,
              complete, total, comprehensive,
exhaustive, sweeping, far-reaching,
            wide-ranging, extensive, across the board,
nnnnnnn        profound, major, stringent, rigorous
                   "radical reform"
      antonyms: [ ] superficial, authentic;
           forming an inherent or fundamental
                                         part of the nature
                    of someone or something;
                               "the assumption of radical differences
                        n              between the mental attributes of
     literate & non-literate peoples"
                          synonyms: [          ]
            fundamental, basic,
essential,                             quintessential;
                              structural, deep-seated,
                 intrinsic, organic, constitutive;
            "radical differences                           between the two theories"
                   antonyms:                            minor
(of surgery or medical treatment) thorough;
           intended to be completely curative;
characterized by departure from tradition;
                           innovative or progressive;
"a radical approach to electoral reform;"
        2. advocating or based on thorough
                                                             complete political & social change;
                                                          repres­enting or  supporting an extreme
                                    or progressive                   faction of a political party;
             "a radical American activist"
synonyms: [             ] revolutionary, progressive,
             reformist, revisionist
, progressivist; extreme, extremist, fanatical,
                         militant, diehard, hard-core
"a radical political movement"
                                antonyms: reactionary, moderate, conservative
3. relating to the root        of something                        in particular
MATHEMATICS:                      of the root of a number or quantity.
                                       n      denoting or relating to the roots of a word;
MUSIC:                                                  bel­onging to the root of a chord.
BOTANY     of, or springing direct from,
               the root or stem base of a plant.
4.                           NORTH AMERICAN                       informal:
                                very good; excellent.
"Okay, then. Seven o'clock. Radical!"               noun: radical; plural noun:
                                               radicals
1. [              ] a person who advocates thorough
                     or complete political or social reform            [revolution];
                    a member of a political party
        or part of a party pursuing such aims.
       synonyms: revolutionary, progressive,
        reformer, revisionist; militant, zealot,
        extremist, fanatic, die-hard; informal:                            ultra
"the arrested man was a radical"
antonyms: reactionary, moderate, conservative
2.  (                        )      CHEMISTRY: (          ) a group of atoms
                               behaving as a unit
                              in a number of compounds.
                              3.[                   ]  ne plus ul·tra
      ˌnē ˌpləs ˈəltrə,ˌnā ˌpləs ˈəltrə,ˌnā ˌplo͝os ˈo͝oltrə/noun: ne plus ultra
    the perfect or most extreme example of its kind;
                                          the ultimate;
"he became the ne plus ultra of bebop trombonists"
synonyms: last word, ultimate,
               perfect example, height, acme, zenith, epitome, quintessence
"the ne plus ultra of jazz pianists"
Origin: [             ]  Latin, literally ‘not further beyond,’
                           inscription on the Pillars of Hercules
                    prohibiting passage by ships.  the root or base
                forming  a
                     word;
any of the basic set of                                     214 Chinese characters
constituting semantically            
                                        or functionally significant elements in the
    composition
of other characters and used as a means of classifying characters in dictionaries.
4.         MATHEMATICS: [             ] quantity forming
                               or expressed as the root of another;
a radical sign.                         Origin: late Middle English (in the senses
‘forming the root’;                 ‘inherent’):
from late Latin radicalis,       from Latin
radix, radic- ‘root.’con·serv·a·tive/kənˈsərvədiv/adjective:
                 conservative
1. [           ] holding to traditional          attitudes and values    
                  and cautious about change or innovation, typically
                                               in relation to politics or religion;
synonyms: [           ] traditionalist, traditional, conventional,
orthodox, old-fashioned, dyed-in-the-wool,
hidebound,   unadventurous, set in one's ways;
moderate, middle-of-the-road, buttoned-down;
informal:  stick-in-the-mud,                     stick-up-ur-***; con·serve
verb: conserve; 3rd person present: conserves;
past tense: conserved; past participle:
                          conserved; gerund or present participle: conserving
kənˈsərv/ 1. (                   ) protect         (something,           especially
environmentally
or culturally,                            important
place or thing) from harm or destruction;
                 "raising funds to help
                               conserve endangered Meadowlands"
prevent the wasteful or harmful overuse of (a resource).
"industry should conserve more water"
synonyms: preserve, protect, save,
safeguard, keep, look after; sustain, prolong,
              perpetuate; store, reserve, husband
"fossil fuel should be conserved"
antonyms: {       } squander
PHYSICS: maintain (a quantity such as energy or mass)
               at a constant overall total.
BIOCHEMISTRY:           retain (a particular amino acid,
nucleotide, or sequence of these) unchanged in different
                                                protein or DNA molecules.
                       preserve (food, typically fruit) with sugar;
noun: conserve; plural noun: conserves
ˈkänˌsərv,kənˈsərv/(1.                      )
               a sweet food made by preserving fruit with sugar; jam.
synonyms: jam, preserve, jelly, marmalade
"cherry conserve"
Origin: Late Middle English: from Old French conserver
(verb), conserve (noun), from Latin conservare
‘to preserve,’ from con- ‘together’ + servare ‘to keep.’
                                      "our more conservative neighbors may object
     to the modern architecture being proposed"
antonyms;                                       radical
(of dress or taste) sober and conventional;
                                  "a conservative suit"
synonyms: [         ] conventional, sober, modest,
           plain, unobtrusive, restrained, subtle,
           low-key, demure;
                                informal:                       ­    square, straight;
                                 "he wore a conservative blue suit"
antonyms: [                ] ostentatious
(of an estimate) purposely low for the sake of caution.
"the film was cheap—$30,000,000
             is a conservative estimate"
synonyms: low, cautious,                    understated, moderate, reasonable
"a conservative estimate"
(of surgery or medical treatment)                         intended to control
rather than eliminate a condition,                        with existing tissue
preserved as far as possible;
                                relating to the Conservative Party
                                 of Great Britain or a similar right-wing    party
                                 in any           country;
                             adjective: Conservative
[synonyms: right-wing, reactionary, traditionalist];
                                    Republican; Tory; informal:                       [redneck]
                       "the conservative wing of the party"
antonyms:           socialist                        noun:­ conservative; plural noun:
               conservatives
1.              person who is averse to change and holds
                              to traditional values and attitudes,
    typically in relation to politics.
synonyms: [               ] right-winger, reactionary,
                      rightist, die-hard Republican; Tory
"liberals and conservatives                    have never
       found common ground"
                    supporter or member                   of the
                   Conservative Party of
Great Britain or a similar party in another country.
no un: Conservative; plural noun: Conservatives
                      Origin: late Middle English (in the sense
                                                 of ‘aiming to preserve’):
from late Latin conservativus;
                    from conservat- ‘conserved,’ from the verb conservare
(conserve).  Current senses date from the mid 19th century onward;
              old-fash·ioned/      /ˌōldˈfaSHənd/adjective: old-fashioned
1. according to styles or types no longer current
                                or common;                                      not modern.
"an old-fashioned kitchen range"
    (of a person or their views)
                      favoring tradition;
                      unusually restrictive lifestyles,                        
                       ideas, or customs;
                     "she's stuffy and old-fashioned"
        synonyms: out of date, outdated, dated,
     out of fashion, outmoded, unfashionable,
                            passé, démodé, frumpy;
                                                        outworn,­ old, old-time, behind the times,
                                                     archaic, obsolescent, down-level, obsolete,
ancient, antiquated,               superannuated, defunct;
medieval, prehistoric,           antediluvian, old-fogey,                             conservative,                                 backward-looking,
quaint, anachronistic,                    fusty, moth-eaten,
          
old-world, olde-worlde; informal:           old hat, square, not with it;
                          horse-and-buggy, clunky, mossy
"an old-fashioned hairstyle"
antonyms:                                   modern, fashionable;
noun            |                                   NORTH AMERICAN:
noun: old-fashioned
1.                 cocktail consisting chiefly of whiskey,
                                              bitters, water & sugar; |
mod·ern/       /ˈmädərn/adjective: modern
1.    relating to the present or recent times
as opposed to the remote past.
                            "the pace of modern life"
synonyms: present-day, contemporary,
present, current, twenty-first-century,
           latter-day, modern-day, recent
                       "modern times"
                        antonyms: the past
characterized by or using the most
                             up-to-date techniques,              ideas,           or equipment.
"they do not have modern weapons"
synonyms: fashionable,
              in fashion,       in style, a·vant-garde
ˌaväntˈɡärd/noun
noun:avant-garde
1.                    new and unusual or experimental ideas,
                       especially in the arts,              
  or the people introducing them:
"works by artists & poets       of the
                [most especially those by                     Mayakovsky & Rodchenko]
    Russian avant-garde"             adjective: avant-garde
1. favoring                    or introducing experimental
                                                        or unusual ideas;
"a controversial,                     avant-garde composer"
                                 synonyms: innovative, original,
                         experimental,                       l      eft-fielded, inventive,
                     ahead of the times,
                   cutting/leading/bleeding edge,
                            new, ultramodern,                    innovatory, advanced,
    forward-looking,
    state-of-the-art, trend-setting,
                      pioneering, progressive,
                      Bohemian, groundbreaking,
                      trailblazing, revolutionary; unfamiliar, unorthodox, unconventional;
                         informal: offbeat, way-out
"this year's avant-garde fashion statement"
antonyms: conservative
Origin: late Middle English (denoting the vanguard
    of an army):                 from French,                          literally ‘vanguard.’
Current senses date from the early 20th century.
   in vogue, up to date, all the rage,                   trend-setting,
         stylish, voguish,                      modish, chic, à la mode;
the latest, new, newest,
                                             newfangled, modernistic,
                                             advanced; informal:
                                trendy, cool, in, with it, now,
              hip, phat, happening,
             kicky,                          tony, fly, styling/stylin'
                          "her clothes are very modern";
             [antonyms: out of date, old-fashioned
denoting the form of a language
that is currently used,
as opposed to any
                                           earlier form];
                                      "modern German"
             denoting                                                 a current or recent style
                   or trend in art, architecture,
                  or other cultural activity marked
                  by a significant departure from
                      traditional styles and values;
           "Matisse's contribution to modern art"
                                   noun: modern;                     plural noun: moderns
1.             person who advocates or practices
a departure from traditional styles or values;
                              Origin: late
   Middle English:               from late Latin
modernus, from Latin modo ‘just now.’
n-khrennikov Sep 2020
I’m from...
I’m from the Volga, serene and majestic
from the hands of the clocks that were moving too slow,
from the grip of the woman that was holding my hand,
from the innocent glance, from the dirt on the asphalt.
From Lenin, Karl Marx, Nietzsche,
from Pushkin, Okudzhava, Brodsky and Mayakovsky,
from the dust on the bookshelves turned gold in the light,
and the country that nursed me that dissolved in my sight.
From the triples threat stance: pass, shoot and attack
from the bully that tested my patience
from the sounds that blasted from the radio station
from the college where I searched for my place
from the choices I’ve made and felt no regret
from cigarette smoke that dissolved in the night
to discipline to write my thoughts
from the house I loved and the rural towns I left,
from the image I saw when I looked at myself,
from Emma to Lazarus, from our sunset gates shall stand
to the moment where everything froze in suspense.
And so, gentle reader, enjoy
And welcome to my original.
H.хренников


This poem parodies the poem "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus. My wife name is Emma. I immigrated to the United States in 2019.
winter May 2021
Virginia, I'm feeling you tonight
Like you're waiting outside my window
Arms outreached with Jacques Rigaut
Elliot I hear you mumbling around
Why now, when you've been quiet for so long?
Cradle me with dreams of California
Under those Teasdale Stars
Drown me like you did to River
I cant take the Mayakovsky life
It's like you're whispering, Brandis
But i hear you,
Your presence moves me
Closer to something
That I'm too scared to see
And yet
You won't stop coming for me
Until the end. This,
I know
Johnny Noiπ Apr 2018
Bettie pulling down the fly of the
land spirit rises out of her clothes  

everyone knows a Russian doctor;
they act like bourgeois gentlemen
from the Old Country where every
body wants to be Tolstoy w/ his
memories of Crimea's smoke & fog

or a Modern Man skulking
***** ridden stone streets;

ashamed of Mayakovsky's
streams of **** running out
of the alley while he howls
to the future man to rise up

everybody knows a Russian doctor;
the wide-hipped strawberry blonde,
white lab coated anti-fascist;

Fembot prototype after years
of development; slender waist
& Asian eyes, limited speech
abilities but able to connect to
the Internet & download whole
consciousnesses from the dark
web into the polymer robot frames

Everyone knows a Russian doctor
that lives on a large boat moored in a
cold marina like a floating apartment
building w/ a second wife & kids

Bettie pulling down the fly of the
land spirit rises out of her clothes

— The End —