Bloodlands

Bloodlands,

sucking quicksands

expensive drinks spilled onto the Kremlin floor

like memories of a great heroic war

near a private bathroom door

left ajar

look! 

a spying

 

sitting Tsar

taking a needed break

holding his pet snake

reading history books and fairy tales

polishing his scales

hissing orders over the phone

while sleeping alone

with himself as his best friend

waiting for the enigmatic end

missing a loving heart

pointing to an ancient wall chart

watching the tiny grains of sand 

slipping thru his Russian hand

like dreams of former empire

strung on the other side 

of  distant barbed wire.

Russian warship

Russian warship.

Go fuck yourself.

this bear has sharp teeth

Romania,

and Sweden,

Finland,

the Baltics

along with Poland,

and other neighbors

who have spotted a cunning bear roaming

near their cultivated gardens,

a peace train is coming.

meanwhile,

Be Safe, brothers and sisters.

this particular bear has sharp teeth 

and fresh blood

is on his claws;

his appetite is voracious.

there is only a small margin of safety.

Putin’s grave

Andrei Dmitriyevich Sakharov 

died 

and the thousands of mourners listened to

Chopin’s “Funeral March” and

Schumann’s dirge “Traumerai”,

a lament for the dead.

At the cemetery,

lingering by his coffin,

his widow kissed him once more.

Soon the grave was covered over with flowers,

red carnations and yellow roses.

But the people will piss on Putin’s grave.

eating salt peanuts

i'm frustrated, honey

eating salt peanuts

on the dance floor

spending my money

while you're keeping score.

i'm hearing things

every time my phone rings

shuffling to the beat

from in the back seat.

i don't have the view

of what's coming over you

but i'm going broke

laughing at your joke:

like a busted inside straight,

i'm always one card late

feeling out of time

at the scene of the crime;

and when the music stops

the final curtain drops.

i'm frustrated, honey

eating salt peanuts

on the dance floor

spending my money

while you're keeping score.

i'm hearing things

every time my phone rings

shuffling to the beat

from in the back seat.

ignoring what you just said

growing numb

living under your thumb

hiding my face

on each lap of the race

eating black bread

ignoring what you just said

not knowing

which way the prevailing wind is blowing

but trying to remain glad

with what i once had

and you're looking at me

knowing i want to be free

giving me a frown

while you're chasing me down

so how can i make sense

if i'm always jumping a fence

as other folk are simply grinning

their winter tires spinning

blowing up in smoke

is this some kind of joke?

well, i've had more than my fill

balanced on the edge of a window sill

looking down

looking around

afraid to fall

afraid of the prison wall

growing numb

living under your thumb

hiding my face

on each lap of the race

eating black bread

ignoring what you just said.

Sakharov

"Andrei Sakharov,"

said Tatyana Zaslavskaya,

"was the only one among us who made

no compromises.  For us,

he was a figure of the inner spirit.

Just the bare facts of his life, the way he suffered for all of us,

gave him authority that no one else had.

Without him, we could not begin to rebuild our society

or our selves.

Gorbachev may not have understood it quite that way when

he let Sakharov come home,

but he would understand it eventually."

In his Nobel Prize lecture,

Sakharov said

"Other civilizations, perhaps more successful ones,

may exist an infinite number of times on the preceding

and following pages of the Book of the Universe.

Yet, we should not minimize our sacred endeavors in the world,

where,

like faint gliders in the dark, 

we have emerged for a moment from the nothingness of

unconsciousness 

into material existence.

We must make good the demands of reason

and create a life 

worthy of ourselves

and of the goals we only dimly perceive."

the more you sang

you leaned in close

grabbed the microphone

you knew you could sing and had the tone

but the more you sang

the more i felt alone

lots of tables and chairs

but all i saw were vacant stares

and a hardwood floor

and i kept wanting more

someone like you

when i'm feeling blue

but if you don't want me

i'll need to bury my fondest memory

on the bar room floor with broken dreams

nothing is ever what it seems

i took a last drag on my cigarette

felt the smoke burn in my eyes

i was wearing a disguise

you leaned in close

grabbed the microphone

you knew you could sing and had the tone

but the more you sang

the more i felt alone.

near Katyn, April 1940

in the forest of Goat Hill near Katyn, 

during the month of April, 1940,

no prayer was answered.

The Mountain Eagle ordered it so.

he was doing his Pole dance,

hiding behind a black mustache

trimmed beneath black eyes,

proximate to a black heart.

he had come a long distance

from Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary

and the seamstress mother

whom he rarely visited.

his game was blood,

from others.

and fear,

from others.

and then he died.

during the Mikhail Gorbachev

realizations, 

old graves,

rotting boots,

smashed skulls,

skulls with bullet holes,

lost youth,

destroyed dreams,

all were found in amazing abundance.

history was to be rewritten,

again,

and again.

memory lived.

was the gulag archipelago dismantled

or momentarily lost from sight?

today,

swimming in oil profits and total corruption,

Russia has a new Tsar who is writing

a new chapter.

his millions of peasants watch,

but their windows

are framed inside a mausoleum.

a KGB caterpillar

Romanov

and the House of cards

assembled together

with the white rabbit and a judo man

to look for a full head of hair

near a nuclear waste dump

in northern Ukraine.

a physicist and an expert on arms control

hypothesized

that weather conditions 

and Soviet incompetence

caused a jet of debris to bomb

the citizens of Donbass

as they were hanging a famous movie poster

on a bullet-riddled wall.

strands of hair 

like thin sheets of confetti

swooned like soft winter snow 

onto the Moskva River

which was dimly lit by street lamps 

near the southern towers of the Kremlin.

inside the former Tsar's Moscow residence,

the emphasis was on greatness

rather than impending baldness,

and where a KGB caterpillar was sucking

on his hookah,

wearing a tailor-made suit designed in Italy,

threatening the world with destruction

if he lost the remainder of his hair.

you heard the cracked bell toll

so you might try to be sly

but death is the winner

all gray and foggy

inside a paradox

adrift inside an ancient box

and it reaches out a bony hand

pointing toward the nearest street

where you meet

in private

looking outside from an open window

for a safe place to go

but the train stopped at your station

when you least expected it.

it wasn't a day like all the other days:

cheap Champagne and cigarettes on silver trays

hot blood 

red wine

eyes staring in space and time

you're jumping over tombstones laid on the ground

without making a sound

looking around

but underneath the trap door is for you

wearing two boots or one shoe

in the steady rain and sucking mud

on a live grenade or a dud

dressed for the dance naked or in costume

on a normal Friday afternoon

you heard the cracked bell toll

calling your soul.