LeTaon

Me dog keeps barking like it knows what it hates. 

It has a way of confirming its argument. 

I write my lines in full sentences. 

Because it feels like a dormant indictment. 

My dog hates cats, apparently. 

It doesn’t know a cat’s stipulations.

But it doesn’t care, errantly.

 It has no political sentiments. 

Fighting dragons is easy,

 Just run around the ancient roofless halls 

And look for the moment to 

Slay it. 

The ‘moment’ here means ‘opportunity’. 

Eat this fruitless cake. 

But, 

And we know that everything that comes after but is, 

Well, is nothing. 

Killing dragons is easy. 

The real ones, I mean. 

But there are other dragons that take a little 

Space 

Once 

At 

A 

Time. 

                                                Sijo I

The spring ravaged the restfulness 

                                of a common abode, spilling its peace. 

Tomorrow battles the morn of calm 

                               like a poet scuffles his rhymes. 

Forgiveness is a prize for those 

                               who are guilty and for us.

                                               Sijo II

Mountains stand like ridges of 

                              proud giants, breaking dreams. 

The dimness of a morrow 

                              wakes up the hopes of a day, but 

the serpent of the road 

Pale windows tolerate the knocking of naked branches, 

overgrown with transient waters, 

waters that have neither dreams nor deaths. 

A handful of warmth left after a lingering winter 

is what’s left to deliver to us. 

The sea of our guilt leaks through the fissures in time. 

Next to us aging memory sits close, 

holding ellipses of candle light in its palms  — 

light like gulls painted in black over dirty walls 

and ringed by lunar gleams — light left to deliver to us. 

Reanimated mouths empty glasses full of a robust sorrow 

Hope lives in the past. But not in the distant 

one, playing in Eden and forging traditions. No. 

Hope lives in the past seized by family photographs, 

where Grandpa’s alive, so is Dad; 

where they are younger that I am now. There, 

in the gloss of those white and black images 

the hope is captured like Browning’s Porphyria, 

The campfire is cheering, flickering, 

unrestricted by big city lights. 

   The river’s skin whitens its shimmering 

obfuscating the rustic paysage. 

     The trees imply prospects of frailty 

from abaft, emphasized by the light 

    in façade. Like the hair on the back has its own 

sensory follicle, hinting glances 

    of menacing beasts. Sparks from woods 

gorged by rapid loss of electrons 

    disappear among stars, reaching nebulas 

and return back as mosquitos and flies. 

    I am sitting on the top of a celestial body. 

Here, under my hands, from the surface of the planet, 

A child points at things and demands signs This is sky This is a rock This is a dragonfly This is a tree Wha … What? Why what? Why

the clouds are white? the rock falls down? the dragonfly flies? the tree . . .

A child sees a tree a child learns that this tree is not like others a child learns the tree’s name

this tree gives the child its first sword this tree is the child’s first castle or a first battleship or a spaceship he breaks his arm falling off this tree and tears his holiday shirt the one he wasn't supposed to wear climbing that tree knowing that  the tear is bigger than the fracture

he burns the brunches of this tree to see magic and stories of fear and valor and life and death and giants and dragons and wizards and queens and soldiers and aliens and sultans and djinns and Vikings and harlequins and archers and knights and witches and dancers and fathers and mothers and daughters and sons and Gauls and Saxons and Slavs and Goths and Khans and Indians and Aztecs and Mayas and voyagers and explorers and villains and merchants and mashujaa and gods and lions and elephants and spiders and witchers and yogs and alchemists and basilisks and mavkas and tsars and viziers and serpents and towers and crows and galaxies all are dancing shadows on his face and

When I was six, 

my mom used to say that 

I am like a laden donkey, 

accepting all the cargo endured. 

She said it after she saw me with 

my backpack on my shoulders, 

a bag full of music scores in my left hand, 

a violin case in my right one, 

and a clarinet case, hanging on my left shoulder,

facing the world. 

Oh, and I had a cellophane bag 

with my notebook 

handing on strings around my neck, 

like an umbilical cord. 

Now I carry different things, 

formless things that are shapeless, non-tactile but… 

galore like a memory of 

an umbilical cord 

that prevents oxygen to 

turn into carbon dioxide, 

painting skin in blue, 

Did you know that the Puss in the Boots was not orange? 

He was not orange 

he was not nice 

he lied to the people 

he took their land 

he took someone’s castle 

(yes, that someone was bad, but…) 

he forced a king to force his daughter 

to marry someone fake. 

At the time, they called this behavior ‘clever.’ 

Andersen’s ugly duckling 

was not the other, 

but an aristocrat lost among poor. 

Two hundred of Grimm’s tales 

had three good fathers and 

sixteen awful step-mothers; 

two good wizards and 

twenty-three wicked witches; 

ones always concerned with 

‘Who’s the Fairest of Them All,’ and 

ones actually saving the day. 

Aladdin was Chinese and 

Humpty-Dumpty was Colchester’s cannon, 

defending the king against 

Cromwell’s men. 

all the king's horses and all the king's men 

cannot put Humpty-Dumpty together again 

Imagine old writers had Twitter. 

@realBeowulfsauthor 

Want to know a secret on how to memorize pages of text? #alliteration 

@ThomasMore 

Henry gets a divorce. There is no place to imagine. 

@JohnMilton 

Dear @CromwellsParliamentUK, stop censorship. Don’t you remember the old ways? Kill a book — kill a person. Same thing. Result? Paradise is lost. 

@WilliamWorsdsworth 

I know that @TaylorColridge knows. You need to know too. Feel it. For God’s Sake, feel it. There are so many untrodden ways. #Lucy 

@LByron 

Just swam across Bosporus. As I do fairly often. Greece, Turkey, other countries in the proximity of my grasp $$$. 

@PercyBShelley 

RIP Keats. Bro, you are f*ing god. @WilliamWordsworth Man, what happened to you? 

@JaneAusten 

Those parables have nothing to do with sex. Are you mad? Or am I? ;) 

@fdostoevsky 

Beauty will save the world. Ask @vonSchiller. New notes are coming. #nodeathpenalty 

@LeoTolstoy 

I hate @STurgenev. He is a schmuck. Ok, I’ll forgive him soon. He is a f*ing genius. Don’t read #warnpeace. I just needed money. 

@TheoDreiser 

Did you see all of this mud? @KarlMarx Dude, say more. 

@TSELIOT 

She…is great. Can’t wait till April. You know: rooms, people, traditions, chocolate, and etc. By the way, stop those #cats. 

@JMcKinney 

Epigraph:

 As I went on Yole day

In our prosessyon

Knew I joly Jankin

Be his mery ton:

Kyrie eléison.

— Anamymous, “Jolly Jankin”

 The Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language (the major explanatory dictionary of the Russian language) composed by Vladimir Dahl (the most prominent Russian language lexicographer and folklore collector) and published in 1880 had followed two simple rules: its author, Dahl, opposes the "illiterate" distortion of words in vulgar parlance and insisted rigorously on the absolute rejection of transliterated/transcribed foreign-language roots (non-Russian) as base words. Yet, the dictionary has the following word: kurolésit’ (куролесить, verb). Here is the closest translation of the definition:

  to kurolesit’ (куролесить, verb):  kurolesnichat’ (куролесничать): to fool around, to create pranks, to prank; to kurolezit’ (куролезить): to behave strangely, unusually, if not mindless. Examples: “Not a good time to kurolesit’, so he keeps quite.”

kurolesnichaniye (куролесничанье, adverb)

kuroles (куролес, noun, masculine): the one who tricks others; Example: “He sings like a  kuroles, but shouts, ‘hallelujah!’ Stupid thing.”

 Note: Russian root ‘куро-' (kuro-) means “related to chicken,” and Russian ‘-лес' (les) means “forest.”

 Kyrieleison (Merriam-Webster): Middle English, from Medieval Latin, from Late Latin kyrie eleison, transliteration of Greek kyrie eleēson: “Lord, have mercy”

 the poem

 Chickenforest does not sound Greek,

but me thynketh it dos me good.

Kyrieleison

  Our lips do not seek you since ancient times;

the host of years eclipsed your dully sight.

Your moan, your latest anecdote, your

linen bile, a very soundless whisper

  and a senile scold, — by toothless leaden

base, —

the run of the twinned time,

had lost to very null.

Kyrieleison

  Here is a sign, here is a signifier.

Here is a secret languor,

a tartest taste of duplicated strings.

Here is your failed answer,

like a ferrous cavity,

obscuring Venus’ flight.

Kyrieleison

  And I do not even refer to Dante,

or to Madonna (so very common

on all rostrums of Paris).

The time does very easy

forget the Dauphins

and judement de la très sainte.

Kyrieleison

  But Moscow, so long before the Peter and ill John

contrived related meetings, clandestinely, in hide

but fearlessly, enough to clarify the drama

(just like the Dantian,) and wandered

untrodden ways of passions, of anguish,

and of all the cycles

of the Commedia.

Kyrieleison

  Fortuitously, there was a tres-amusing motive:

a flock of sinners that fail to raise their gaze

above the yellow fold of darkness;

The God himself forgets them, exhaustively,

by all the rules that rhyme with the iconic role;

with a more profound overtone than on a blotted

canvas

accented with a reddish smudge of

La philosophie postmodern,

where Pollock too forgot what brush is and how to freestyle,

where sinners are, where meanings mar,

where hide Foucault and Nietzsche,

where is Miltonic glint,

and where is earthly lint.

Kyrieleison

  Hence, all above that, above the minds of the Medieval Rus,

the story goes, the Mother asked the God to exculpate

entire sinnerdom — Kyrieleison.

And God, being demur as any deity would,

reluctantly agreed to

limit his forgiveness to fifty days and three,

incepting on Good Friday and

lasting to the Day of Pentecost —

“You do have mercy, Lord,”- the sinners screamed,

“Kyrieleison”

  to kurolesit’ grew to have another connotation:

to fool, to prank, to idle,

to dawdle mightily mindlessly,

to fear no recompense.

She has nice hands. 

I like them. 

When she moves them, 

the muscles create little shadows because 

she has strong hands. 

Her arms look good too, 

but the hands look better. 

I saw hands like hers in the past. 

Those hands were older, 

those hands worked longer, 

those hands are no more 

Her hands remind me of a rye field: 

the shadows are short but colorful; 

the wrinkles are blossoming; 

and the mirror of nails looks like a dew. 

Her hands will change. 

Note: I am working on a set of sonnets dedicated to Russian and Ukrainian poets that are underappreciated in the West. Previously, I’ve published just one titled “Yesenin.” This sonnet is the second one in the series. 

During the terrifying years of the Great Purge, I spent seventeen months waiting in Leningrad’s penitentiary queues. Once, someone “espied” me. The woman standing behind me, the one who, surely, never had heard my name, awoke from the rigor so peculiar to us all and asked into my ear (everybody whispered there):

-       Will you be able to describe this?

and I said,

-       I can.

Then, something smile-like slid across what used to be her face.                - Anna Akhmatova, April 1st 1957, Leningrad (now St. Petersburg)

The throbbing cuneiform-like marks engraved

upon your cheeks. Amalgamated skin

is now a canvas. The calligraphic strain

peeks out from underneath the eyelids’ ailed

grin. This is how faces fall [1], like squalls,

like fronds of autumn – yellow, black, and cold,

and breath-lesser than dead. While arid bawl

of squirming Rus between Neva and Don [2]

had faded stiff upon submissive lips.

‘Stray Dog Café,’ the ‘Finest Age of Men’ [3]

grew pale against satanic rabid years,

as no one dared to look where Mother stood

three hundred hours, fearing to forget

the black marias’ [4] sound and their debt.

[1] reference to Akhmatova’s Requiem

[2] Neva [Neh-vah] River and Don [Dohn] River

[3] Café in St. Petersburg (former Leningrad). The place of first Acmeist poetry meetings. The term Acmeism was coined after the Greek word άκμη (ákmē), i.e., "the best age of man."

I am afraid not to be subtle enough to pierce the thinnest fabric,

as my anapests, dactyls, and spondees stress proper issues.

I am afraid not to be loud enough to elevate the decibels to 

the intolerable spectrum, harmonizing frequencies of mixed wavelength   .  .  .