Medea

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Words broke the silence,
keeping promise,
I start to speak.
Both night and time
are stirring -
I’ve no trust
in what’s going on,
but you’re the eyewitness of my story on paper crying with the fire,
the tempest and the drunken storm.
Could that be words? -
Behind the drawn
                curtains
                the foliage                scratches the window.
I do not yet open the door,
                the keys
are still yet to be found.
You, standing by the edge,
for not that long,
are to fall silent,
                now for keeps.
We’ll get to know as well about it.
The mirrors don’t show her reflection.
She’s being followed by the poets,
and here she is, within five steps of walking distance, behind this door, in theatre and in poems.
I’ve no trust
in what’s going on.
Now we are bound
with one fate, love, a frightful mask.
Above us is the crescent, blue,
and it’s still beautiful.
I’ll listen to your every breath,
whatever words come from your mouth -
I will transmit all what I can, whatever fate has promised us:
to burn together in one hell,
whenever be the guilty one,
                of all.
All of this also I’ll get through.
The judgements of the raving ruck,
the vain noise of applause.
Above us is the crescent, blue,
and all in all is like an order of onslaught. 
As the declaration of war.
Committed crime
and asking for
not for repose,
but rather curse!..
But word is spoken, written down and judged.
And the beauty
which is the one for all
is in our sight.

16.00. 11.07.10

***

They gave me
(a) bunch of pinky roses
for the way my threats are composed
in my own lyrics to provoke a lump in throat.
Let’s change the topic;
Lyrics are not worth converse.
And what is clear - the bigger shame
than being a cop I might not name.
And, then, the picture of our world
is due to change in ten years
from now on.
...all of this been, outlived and passed...
Same making count with life,
the round dance.
But words are spoken by the crowd,
blending
the prose with the verse.
Even if we’re under the whip
in a country which is defunct,
this is what poet tells you now:
- Russia is larger than a country,
or even world. Russia’s unique.
It’s place is in the hearts,
and map is solely a kind of a dream,
illusion. 
And a magpie with its chirrup
from Vyborg
is much nearer and dearer to me
than the hymn’s sound,
insane and flaming now again.
And same broad faces tell us
wrong from right
and how it is claimed.
But rose pink dusk is not to be cancelled by words.
And roses on the muddy floor are to remain the flowers,
slaves to remain the people,
and cozzers - cozzers.

02.25. 12.11.09

***

Names are known for quite a while.
Someone’s to begin.
Neither armour vests will save life,
nor the guards will.
Wry walls which saw many fights
will not be much help.
Over Kremlin is to rise up
piceous black flag.
Catilina! Meinhof! Che Guevara!
Is the only way. To die or to get free.
And it’s much better to die
being an anarchist,
than being a profiteer. 
With no effort there’s no right to live.
May the words mean at least something.
Very soon you’ll see the new ways of
anarchists taking action.

18:38. 20.04.11

***

I track down time by poems -
see the last.
I do not trust the night calls,
the beat of the hearts,
the long love making,
the news and the fools,
and the TV that lies,
and the clouds in the skies
continuously winging way through
the air - God knows where and why.
I do not trust those who tell
this and that, look in the eye
devotedly -
the reasons, the sequence
and the relations’ kind.
I do not trust the clear blue sky,
the government, and nor do I
trust voices, climbing out of soul.
I don’t believe in Amsterdam
and nor do in the mere phantasm.
I do not trust visitant birds -
the words which I choose to indite.
But in anticipation of the next page
I tremble with anxiety.

20.20. 19.10.09

***

My Russia’s serving time in jail.
For me there is no fence
                against ill fortune,
nor there is from insanity.
Without offers and commissions,
without the love rendering,
I conjure all at once my visions.
They’re much different, there are
no beasts or humans.
The patients of the nearest clinic
get to feel even more unwell.
I know, my syllable’s identikit,
but what is pilpul for me?
What is wit?
To fly between white static moons
I never made believe,
nor did I overscore the dawn
or with the dirty boots
ruined the blood.
And with a raven black handgun
I haven’t killed anyone.

02.59. 28.11.09

***

Medea, Macbeth or the Mist?
And should I care about this? -
It’s inappropriate to mix
the pot with the powder
                and the lavender.    
And what’s of interest of some
is not a cause to first imprint
and then stain the shelves
                with a new tome.
In which
         the phantom landscape      
                and reality
were changing into bare lie,
the second between you and I,
defined (by) dot dot dot.
May comprehension of the naught help to complete the ritual.
The piece, ripped out of the depth,
between the stage play
                and the wait.
In which our life is clear and plain.
In which the night’s to stand away.

22.00. 05.10.12

***

from the poem “Macbeth”

Terrible minute,
do not pass away.
And if there’s something left   
                unclear,
this is what I shall say:
                puzzled out mystery
                will be forgotten.
The only left shall be the loose end,
without
        - crushed by the tempest -   
                mark.
They read me
            reading lips
               of Korneev and Pasternak.
The misdeed and the dagger,
a bit more corpses -
so that the reader can be glad.
But this is no key to the puzzle,
and mystery remains itself.
Look, ink with blood
are smeared all over the version   
                of Pasternak,
and music alike truth is out.
Look, Dunsinane
is under England’s reign
now for keeps.
And my dear Scotland
is under the vile reign of the king.
An apparition damned
                and full of fright.
But the magisterial fate
leads me with the no straighter way
right to the ending of the line.
Where I am by my knees
                being grabbed
with the palm of Duncan, dead.

07.10

***

She wanted it herself.
In pitch-dark basement
the loudspeakers boomed.
Who knows
how many shots of vodka,
glasses of wine she has consumed.
Then cried over the cell,
bawled against everyone,
which did not mean a thing,
and for a dog’s age shed the tears
over the polished counter
                of the bar.
The frightful God laughing at her,
but, Barbara, I’m at your feet,
                you know.
I understand you,
when love shows its grin,
we do not choose a thing.
Down to the well,
to the spilt water,
down the whirlpool
the drowned man,
lugged by the rock,
the same way down going
is not to choose,
hitting the bottom
with his shoulder.
Barbara, this is not your fault!
All of this is the fate
                within the life,
where used to be the joy
now shows up sorrow.
So is the unconsoling summary.
But this is the dare-devil night
                for free.
Go snort straight off the table,
resume to drink,
forget the past forever,
make it quench. 
For life is not a movie, nor a game,
love is no sighing on a bench.

17.40. 26.05.10

***

With the racemosa the night got pale,
in the rain the white may spinning round,
taking left. And no longer I chant
the delusions, the drugs or the ill,
where my poor song was kissed
                with the dusk’s ardent flame
making listen to verse every city
and make reading lips dutifull.
Not a thing’s meant to be one too many.
Never meeting again - be too soon.

00.28. 23.05.10

***

I toast to the walls of the clinic,
to all that casts shadow on me,
to drunk russian faces and junkies,
the white nights, to prophecies,
to trains’ noise, to nettle
and to the
cities’ and towns’ bitter blood,
the gulf’s yellow foam
and the falsehood
of St. Petersburg’s yards.
To fame and to the outrage,
to shared accommodation,
I toast to what’s fun and what’s rubbish,
to the night at the police station.
To what is without any doubt.
To the sleepless morning hour,
which I believe in no more.
To the mask of noble Medea,
which is with the black paint sloshed.

01.22. 05.10.11

***

I measure word
using the scales of Pushkin.
Night, sun and moon,
and likely half past two,
but time’s a sort of a room-screen
for the poet.
The summer is within
a week or two,
then the inflation and the war...
Go paint it red. The bliss! -
is what you’re after, - the lambs,
the lions and the pigs,
the jackals and the cops,
the wolves
and the left and the right.
Then all is gone
and the grave smiling wide,
opening its black and stinky trap.
Or may it be vice versa?
But what a difference it makes?
Descending the dark staircase
I am awaiting suffering, not bliss.
And I’m not interested at all
in dreams come true -
the idle goo
of man. I’m nauseous at the sight of people,
obnoxious to my own self.
Meanwhile the clouds burst with rain,
and thunder echoed the same way
that Fyodor Tyutchev put it down.
I stepped out
onto an avenue. I turned around.
Beyond the crossing, to the left there was the street
both luminous and quiet,
which a poet’s quick
to comprehend.
And I went there,
lengthened the stride,
for I got to behold that sign,
of final, being near at hand,
the masks before long away ripped,
concealing previously
the void,
in full obedience sealed lips,
unearthly beauty
and the word.

02.40. 07.05.09

***

Night again. Abandoned room,
which I am also to leave.
Rhyming is the cursed gold,
to a poet being doomed.
Funnier than such-like measure
solely is the death by axe.
Golden arrows are no more,
than the stars past the glaze,
just a torture, an ordeal.
Likewise becomes the count
any leave, any parting.
Likewise any of our words
is either a lie or twist.
The defeat, the flat, the night.
I stab lyrics with the knife.
To make century fall dumb,
stumble upon the clean slate,
using melancholy for
making white pages go insane.

03.00. 29.05.10

***

I see the year 20 ablaze,
chimera bleeding its heart out.
I see the nation running mad
and hanging premier upside down.
At the place of a scull I smell the pot
and warm blood, crimson as the dawn’s light. 
And all of it’s so well and good,
as a properly well-spent life.

03.00. 29.05.10

***
from the poem “Macbeth”

McDowell skirred
and I am left by my own self.
Don’t shiver, take me by the hand,
we used to be infatuated with one love,
but it was only the mirage.
Likewise once stepped over few corpses,
you don’t make count of all the rest,
only leave them behind...
Give me your hand.
We are said scum appearing lie.
But mind is wily in same manner!
Look at the bloody rough-edged wound, the dagger,
protruding out of Duncan’s chest,
shiny as star of Bethlehem.
Look at all of what
that witch croaked me then.
I am the Thane of Cawdor.
McDowell skirred
and therefore
he is the killer!
But we shall not disguise,
we’ll step out and then tell the crowd
who is the utter villain.
The one who stayed or who skirred?
As if all of the guilt accepting in the red,
the dagger is the evidence.
Oh, Lady, it does shine as thousands of diamonds,
as turquoise eyes of yours.
With one stab, without hesitation -
do you recall your words?
Now we are at the peak of what you dreamt of.
But what is it with you?
You’re bothered with the corpses?
They’re keeping quiet.
And there’s no such might
that could have made them talk.
Their only way is to deep graves.
Whilst we’re to live on mountaintops,
the only law where is - the will of two.
A poet shall lack strength of character
to end this cursed verse.
But I will speak out,
author is no holdback to me.
How much of blood though!..
Let the maids deal with it...
And go scream more of the blue murder, Lady.
Or rather call the boots.

07. 10.

***

What for am I given the words,
ability to speak, without wanting to?
What for is the strict hearsay
and a row at the cruel medico?
What for am I allowed to see
what’s out of reach of other bardlets?
What for is my lung sewed to ribs
with a contaminated acus?
What for the falling evil, dancing at my view,
is throwing me to a wet and cold floor?
What for are my plans for tomorrow?
Likewise a heroin hardcore
awaits his fix in a lousy clinic,
knowing he’s not gonna get high.
What is the year 2011
is playing with me for right now?
Fontanka running into Neva,
instead of flags on houses are the advertising signs.
October painted foliage in the garden
that’s on the left, and on the right
is the cruiser which isn’t to give fire, no more.
Whereas, my God, how that’d be cool!
And sun is making morning whirl
and hiding past the roofs.

02.05. 07.03.11.

***

Here is the white sheet,
lightened joint, the pen and 1 a.m. 
And does it take much courage
to fill in the clean slate?
To make it shiver, facing me,
because of tossing, fearful lines.
But yet again what has been void
is likely to turn out
into the not what it had seemed,
with smoke piercing the eyes.
When silence had been loud.
When life had seemed both plain and fine.
But it was worth-while: glancing at the meter,
the writing, the form and the date.
The words are no good in telling the truth. 
Before me is the clean slate.

01:00. 26.04.11.

***

Hey, lords... who’s in the chair of state?
The tyrant, the glum ghost.
The country’s thrashing ‘round in agony.
Where to am I lead by the hoax?
Do we appear better?
The night brighter?
Or is the day sparkling with silver?
But chains of gold got only longer.
And only rose the cost of throne.
They scare me with the obsceneness,
but can it even correspond
with dreams deceased?
To their number
I’ll get around to fill in the whole theatre.
I’m not to be overpersuaded.
I saw, I know, I am quite sure:
not to live my own life in vain -
those witches I shall defer to.
Translation made me numb,
and Lady’s shading off within the book.
Only the moment’s what to stay,
and scant and circumstantial clues.

21.30. 05.10.12

***

Pitchfork of the storms,
measurable drouth,
scroungers cutting debt,
a sea going slut, her mouth,
painted fire red.
Shaking knees, as if a theft,
and the thunder of a piece.
Up in skies Most High will tell.
With the current eyes are pierced.
Repartitioned holy writs
promising the void.
The loud bang, the pit, the mist -
I will steal it all.
Or again dig in a hole,
through the spring steps of the throat.
Where the bears yawl again
and the black snow’s on rooftops.

22.35. 26.07.11. - 12.20. 02.06.12.

***

Anguish turned out to be infinite,
night - the beautiful,
futile - the love.
And one day,
rather an autumn evening,
it will start to rain from above.
And one day... which moment exactly? -
words will turn out to be the in run.
All of them. I shall never forget you.
Here’s the road as a firing ground.
Here’s the all;e, half-century old,
Here’s the lost life and the line.
The five pills and half a soul.
And a snatch of the verse, which’s not mine.

01.50. 11.08.12.

***

When you leave the club
and head home by metro,
avoid cops and watch out,
entering the porch.
And fear nothing.
As there’s nothing to be afraid of.
For all we had we lost.
A sort of a friendship
is what we’re left with,
to a man - no credit,
to a woman - an insult,
as a matter of fact.
No music, not a sound.
And the words flying wall-to-wall
as if being condemned
to be pronounced and stained.
At the yesterday’s show
I got into a fight
and feel pain in my fingers,
my voice trembling with fear
of what we had is forgotten: 
all we had to confide,
the eyes, the comet, the love,
the voices, the ink,
the space and the time.

02.40. 22.06.09.

***

Stars are falling to the pit,
who is hiding there?
Characters wrongly arranged -birds, help me with it -
caw caw and
tweet tweet!
Tell the whole world
I drown deep,
fall down with the star.
Blue pen’s writing once again
things of little mark.
Night is beautiful,
life’s empty,
evermore’s no go.
Death is beautiful and simple.
Everything’s not that hardcore.

01.10. 25.11.09.

***

from the poem “Macbeth”

Smoky smoke
and past way, past,
past the beauty that is awesome,
past the wind and past the water,
past the fire and the ashes
to the dirty red-hot cauldron
Past the life, the night, the traitor,
both the castle and the tower.
The wood shall show the legator.
Contrarily things will turn out,
and to the right is the turn.
Rivers, grasses, river’s sound,
marching to the overworld
armies. Smoke out of the cauldron,
the star and the blood in it,
the dead water to complete.
Wooden wood,
night made of day,
power made of blood and flame,
Dust of lavender, the besom,
poppies, henbane, war and peace -
let them with the poison mix.
At a glance or under stare
the snake crawls out of thin air.

06.12.

***

The sovereign country.
We lived and composed somehow.
And on from Alexander Pushkin
they used to kill us and to love.
The reader, the hunted, the ax.
I see no point in specifying names
and miserable weep will sound 
to no God, no Satan, no one.
We are at Golgotha of our books,
in heaven of our audiences,
your grandchildren shall tell earful
about us and listen to us.
And what is power? Shameful mark
on tyrants forehead. Anatine nose.
Over the hardly breathing country
the shadå of the cretinous dwarf.
Hasn’t it been likely forever?
This is why we are the endowed.
And eftsoons trains to Magadan depart.

14.10. 20.08.11.

***

Pro et contra

I am underneath, six feet deep.
Though I’m present, I am no more.
And now out of my life you stamp
a stencil and an artwork.
And the profiteers are making money
on my crazy, abnormal words,
and a nymphet, pretty and juvenile,
likes the verse about love a lot.
And she’s reading my poor white book, 
being of her own breath short,
whilst my feet abut on the coffin’s
wooden and rotten top.
I implore, cut it out, it is stupid,
for some kind of a miserable lot
is coming out at the lyrics,
where the curve of a disjoint thought
gets the count of it all.
And then everything will disappear.
Dirty wood neighbors the graveyard,
from the thorny abyss I scream:
“I’m no more!”
And right next: “I’m here!”
Term is finished,
cut out talking tears,
talking years not spent
and the birches -
my hate for them
combines to devotion.
I know ways that you
shall misquote me.
What’s the evil to me?
And the good, and the moral?
I got close to the very edge,
beyond which is the heavens’ wide open.
I am six feet deep underneath
the blue coronet of the sky.
I represent the verses,
the kilometers, the ciphers.
But from all of the days outlived
for no minute or line I had sorrow
and instead of the word “grief”
I shall put the suspension points.

16.20. 29.10.09

***

from the poem “Macbeth”

The Birnam Wood is all red with its foliage,
as witches promised, -
moving.
It started marching towards castle.
Cut out bouncer!
This way the ciphers get naked, near-death.
And get to be seen clear the things
that seemed complex.
That objectivity is no more than a curtain.
Hiding the archetype,
bloody and with the teeth-bared fire burning.
But I take grip on sword –
it is so hot.
I do not care and this is not the point.
I used to kill by dozens, even more,
I used to be a faithful soldier then.
But as soon as their chief got to be stabbed,
Macbeth both to a tyrant and a traitor turned.
Any blood has been spilt in vain.
All of the rest is just a game,
interpretation, some kind of the stilts for brain.
Glamorous Thane I will remain...
And if there’s anyone to see the difference between
the blood of Duncan and the rest that I have spilt
while being faithful soldier, me... –
I do not mind. There’s no blue blood!
Everyone has it red, alike the leaves of the trees
with which Inverness is in a circle put.
The Birnam Wood, the Birnam Wood.
Macduff and Ross,
and Menteith, moral –
do you consider yourself clean?
But you’re all wrong!
And me alone,
with sword, the English army close,
and the amount of all you, faithful, is round about a thousand.
But your credit is law, and the clear mind.
Mine – freedom, boundless.
I do not string along with you,
to kneel before the bare illusions... Treason?
May it be so!
But if I lose,
you are to lick the palms of son of Blanco.
And he’s aware of it too.
All clear, the slave
prefers the master
being double dealer.
It’s easier for a slave to accept.
I am no slave. I mutilated my conscience myself.
And I’m the Thane of Cawdor!
Everything’s possible. Now I do know.
The reasons and the consequences are no more
than a mere dream.
And I will lose, of course.
But who’s the victor? Show me him!
I’ll tell the audience in the hall about it.
My Scotland is the England’s province.
And all the freedom’s in a king’s loo
for a hundred years onward!
Îh, this is true victory over
the evil of today for future slavery!
Shall you bring Englishmen the head of me, Macbeth?
Well, I am ready. But you know... you should not swear
using the words like the truth, the credit, the good.
For you’re not only fortunate, what’s more –
you are the puppets which the poet set around me
in this very hall.
But I’m to stay forevermore.
Where emptiness is singing frantically,
and cold and faultless star is shining
over the white-stone fortress unavailingly.

02.35. 25.03.11.

***

Out of green flames
of wet woods
and others’ voices roar,
as a principle
to mention a trite,
so is always my verse -
over a guard
I’m not common with,
and his sight.
Bayonet under the ribs!
But hasn’t winter passed?
Isn’t the prick - the fix is worth?
The dark russian cities are once again
crawling out of the black earth.

16.40. 30.03.10

***

See, the angels above me this time
are not like those from before.
And the song became completely different,
to make love strangle in a hope
of a pricky and clear given,
of the orders, which I do lack.
Seå, the angels above me,
and each one holding a gun in hand.
With my own hands I break the ice
to make country with tears choke.
This city will kill me and bury
under the leaves of birches.
Except for these confessions’ mist,
point of which will abase the verse,
there are only music and breakup –
one for two, which is even worse.

16.40. 18.05.10.

***

Go on, do teach me being patient
with miserable words of yours,
but this night, already the last one,
December shall go in a whirl
over us. You and I are same
afore the winter, its insanity, 
and this quietude does not comply
with what’s been said already twice
Go teach me, teach me being silent,
when maddened crowd is yelling loud.
Do not forget your promises.
But keep in mind: blind is the love.
The last ciphers shall come to naught.
There have been three of them
- all clear?
And may this abyss listen to my cruel words
and hear.

00.24. 31.12.10.

***

I remain being poet and within the shows
I stage dive, playing fool -
the line is trembling with anxiety,
being pulled on thread of stubborn verse.
The slate of twenty centimeters’ width.
The pen changed to the red one
and as an unavailing river,
the other way round, flew.
I know this place:
here miracles bechance,
here it is inappropriate to make pretend.
Eye to eye.
Facing a cursed abyss,
in which the fire
of nothingness
and the unknown hiss.
The neverending nightmare,
curses, the threats, the insults,
the words without any shame.
I remain being poet and
my star is shining bright.
Make no mistake.

15.25. 07.05.09. - 15.35. 18.05.10.

***

Bloody drops of ashberry, street light
and the road being very quiet,
only the seldom cars
are being driven by...
Oh, give me the words for the verse!
I’m asking for nothing, but it,
for life’s just a colorful patch
put on the eternity.
Oh, give me a peg in time
to get to know the anew.
And air, and wind, and light,
an in run towards word and rhyme.

04.30. 28.09.11.

***

The heat of flames...
The guts outwards...
The yard is cluttered with the bodies.
The limpid star’s shining over the castle.
I see everything clear...
The black, the blushful...
And greasy warms in the eyes of the dead...
Macduff called out the Britons...
betrayed everyone...
His country... me... whom else?
For him I am a monster, murderer,
the filthy moralist...
Which virtue?.. Blood is everywhere!
But I shall not move back.
So let the victor write the play.
I shall not go to great lengths
long before Malcolm and Macduff.
And even though
it’s not a woman
who gave you birth,
but someone’s good genius.
I see clearly:
the night will pass
and stars are to fall into space.
You moral makes me sick
as well as my life’s
making you afraid.
There is the body,
doubled up,
lying about in a corner.
The bulging eyes,
in a puddle of blood.
It stinks.
A horrid sight.
But he’s a hero, isn’t he?
Everything’s malodorous
in the arms of death.
With no exceptions.
And this is what Macbeth
shall tell you:
here everyone minds himself decent,
isn’t it?
But what’s the use?
The bodies stink
the same way.
Twenty, thirty tears,
some are left forty.
But nevertheless
each one is to stink in a coffin.
With shame or shameless,
rich and poor,
kind and evil.
And the body is stiff.
The emptiness and the indifference
are in the glazy eyes.
It doesn’t care
that kindness
got victorious in this play.
Go jeer, the poet!
My sword in my hand,
I hear the song.
I’m Thane of Cawdor. I’m Macbeth.

19.00. 24.03.11

***

We are the predators. And we deserve it.
We did not disgrace our verse.
Oh, white bread of the bourgeois
neighborly the blue border light.
You’ve been made dirty with our boots
in the big city clubs and theatres,
and torn to threads
turned out to be the lyrics,
and at the barrel of a gun
was put to stare the sound in fact, pronounced as if nowhere.
And this circle broke ending up
at the height of no name.

21.35. 17.02.11. - 16.30. 08.01.12.

***

Talking poetry with the editor

- There are
many unspoken words etc.
My verses become shorter,
I tend to curse less than before.
For that I know
how the star
darts off and falls into the Neva
because of what’s beyond my understanding
yet what to rhyme I am ablå
and dare, to make it simple and composed.
- Excuse me, but what for a living to do -
d’you suppose?
The audience does not care for such things;
you ought to keep it real;
you better stuff your verses with the love up to the chin,
and, if you’re not a fool, -
more violence, cursing, porn -
this is what readers of nowadays
are looking for.
- But I’ve already told all of this,
and this theme, alike Martial of nowadays,
have turned into my own system and phrase.
Believe me, I’ve seen this before.
Used to live like a cat or, say, a dog,
which is nearly the same in fact.
I used to spit in literature with hot curse
and worship whores
as the Mother of God.
I disgraced my people alike a flock,
and my whip for the letters was
the Soviet monotonous iamb,
and cursing for me served as commas.
- Exactly! This is what establishment craves for!
They’re bored with their blue, womanly,
genteel, tedious verse.
Give them the dirt!
- Hey, stop! But I haven’t written for them a single line,
why should I even now start to?
The shelves of popular chain shops make no interest of mine...
-  But hang on, it’s me who you’re in hock to...

The poet gives the editor a punch in the face and takes away his copy.

19-20.08.11.

***

They tell me everything is wonderful,
that in this world, the best of all,
my verses are pretentious
and disastrous,
hardly the verses – rather stones.
While people love and sun does shine
and someone even says – what’s more –
that the spring’s earlier to come,
according to the weatherlore.
What is it?
Haven’t you got bored?
But I prepare you for an age
in which you will not recognize yourselves.
Let burn the libraries
in the severe fire flames.
We’ll go through all of this
and speechless we’ll remain
meeting two questmen from the fifth department.
- What for the library was burnt by night?
- So was the revolution’s mind!
And then the firing squad,
but with no bird cherry,
and the eye of the real life
is to get lost
in the last and uncommon abyss,
and here to stay are the songs and the verses.

01-02.10.

***

There is half a dawn
dancing on your armour.
Thunders, and above me
the sky’s drowning flowers
and a knife that cut
the cloud, making the rain
from it to jump out.
I write this to you,
in face of the snowstorm,
in face of the wind,
crying beyond the field.
The sun melts the green,
and the nought is shining.
No one here believes
no one is acquiring
a cause for a song
or the power of dancing.
Hammer of diversions,
Rosencrantz’s collapsing.
Mouth burning with cry –
the void merely playing,
the clue goes hiding,
and the dogs are baying.
Cut out talking ‘bout this.
I want the truth only.
But the hand of poet
chants the monotony,
the black ice, the puddles,
the leaf fall, the autumn,
along with the star fall.
Out of the sore throat,
the omerta talking –
always the right one.
Words onto the paper
keep moving round.

05.12.

***

Is it possible to get to know and
understand the way century speaks to itself?
But the fear will unbind and set free,
and
the void screams in the darkness: “ain’t!”
But in my heart the words pulse
though the verses make worse
my living. For that each day
the clearer is the point –
I shall one day cut the thread
of the doubts and the fearful letters’ quake,
and the stars, and the moon, and the night will remain.
And even if the verses are fuss and lies,
over me are again solely rain and the skies.

20.10. 28.11.11.
 
***

The bears roar, the wood buzzes,
and the filth in the cauldron stirs.
But who’s the mad one here
and the bandit,
and the reiterating of the tale and selling play
and all the rest?
The cauldron boiling with the moody song,
the words of which are kind of plain,
but yet impossible to put together.
The Scottish dog, the Georgian panther...
What is the meaning?
What did that Lady want,
the one in tears and wearing white,
and rubbing hands?
No use!
The fire, the thick wood, the bandage on the eyes.
And all the rest’s merely obscure.

10.30. 24.06.12.

***

They both stepped in there
and missed out one another.
But what is it for you
in my forth collection of verses,
with three circles in it – the pitch-dark and the sullen?
For lower classes, for the poet by the fate,
which is known ahead of the game,
which has a narrow path for us to take
to get out of the gloomy wood
to the yawning heights of the cities,
where our fire’s the ray of light in the dark kingdom,
and there are no surveillance, no denunciations
and no boards on the shoulders
of the government.
Burn the Greek fire,
burn the illusions to the ground.
My dream and my postponed shame,
my high cliff of the granite,
which the ocean crashes against,
and rumors break, hitting the ground.
They both stepped in the trap,
and that means one of them is confident and calm.

00.30. 08.04.12.

***

Let the life on the paper
and as a rook it shall sing.
Lay in the coldest night,
do not remember a thing.
Measure your mile in the grief,
in the winter and in the tears.
With the bitter saliva in mouth.
Under the blue skies.
Not the clattering is the point –
the train’s rushing to nowhere.
The tears, the winter, the snow
shall be ‘nough for all the years.
Believe in the no use of “no”,
while haven’t yet lost your reason.
The night, the crime, the absurd,
the city, the verses, the winter season.

30.12.09.

***

But what is it?
The bloody bugs are crawling over me...
Get off... what is it with the hands?..
you can not pick the Duncan’s blood off them, it has already bloomed with the hideous flowers.
The witches and the lightnings
dancing in the sky,
the ground crumbles
under feet,
and if the birds used to sing
in the wood before,
now it’s the bear’s out of its lair roar.
And the ghost of the old man
is before me,
he bows falsely
and comes laughing.
And if I close my eyes again,
I hear the dead men song being sung.
We used to live, we used to be...
As if I am already buried.
Enough!
Cut out this play!
May it be life?
The show and the actors?
The poet, the piano and the black curtains?
And the damned vile patterns
which the musicians underhand
cut out of the silence
of no one’s need?
McDowell skirred – this I do know,
but I forgot the rules of the game.
Enough!
No more!
I beg!
The bloody bugs, the grubs between the fingers...
The old man keeps murmuring something with the Scottish accent...
Cut off the buffoonery... I’m dying,
and this is to say that the masks are fallen off
the spectators, the actors, my husband and me.
Instead of throne – the pit with the dead.
And under feet –
a messy bloody puddle.
And after all I lack the words.

15.30. 23.03.11.

***

Then let burn
the whole city
with the fires
that people
ripped out of the sky.
And, tortured in trap,
on the rack –
let howl the prayers –
the time.

12.

***

The moment I snatched the pen
the trains went clattering.
The moment I snatched the pen
amongst the new buildings a fire set,
and all of the rest went down.
In the greedy mouth of the blaze
the wasted life was in flames.
Out of this heat and smoke
that looked so appealing and hot,
as the crimson dusk of the sun,
the way is the only one:
to Hell.
The lane’s
like the line of the powder
that running out at the feet.
I’ve been there and seen so much,
that felt: time to go back, indeed.
But as soon as the paper
finished to grow pale,
it showed the way
the things shape up.
The fights, the shoot-outs,
the plain words, the syringes,
the dirty money, the cheap bitches,
the punitive article for the drugs
and sweeping under the rug.

00.28. 21.04.10.

***

More important than the talks of yours,
than the awkward fated lives and deaths,
more brazen than the brazen pimps
and paler than the sun that is pale
is my shy Muse, said to be the whore,
knowing neither minus, nor the plus
and singing the loveliest songs.
To the hand, the laughter and the shouts,
the roar of the thousand-eyed hordes,
she goes breaking down the monuments
and hails both the will and the folk.
Her path is the unidentified –
I’m way to foolish to get to learn.
She is not trying to find
a place on the shelves
amongst the rest of the tomes.
The other deal is the yard,
the tavern or better the notepad. 
All of the rest’s
the boredom with the lie.
Amongst the imposed darkness
you’re the only one
dancing and singing,
Muse of mine.

00.10. 12.10.12.

***

Macbeth gone mad already,
Medea is a terrorist.
And flickering at hand
are the mental health clinics.
Corinth and Dunsinane ablaze.
May life stir inside me
as if a hollow curse
and the tears get shed over the parterre.
I also used once to believe
that planet is to quiver, get awake,
but these words aren’t even
to bother an old dog.
So, all in vain? It could be so.
But I’m not able to cut short the verse.

03.05. 19.08.11.

***



***

I could not care less for
Shakespeare and Euripide –
we made the drugs in the basement.
And put the commas at a venture.
I’m now so sorry to have set right “Non-hardcore”.
I do prefer the first amendment.
To write using the trochee I still haven’t learnt.
The sound of consonants
is much more captivating:
them being hard and thorny.
The whole life is left for the until later
between the stringy, rhymed words.
But the stage is empty
after the show
and looks alike the basement
beyond my recall.
Corinth, Dunsinane and St. Petersburg
are nominal and formal.
But empty is the stage after the show.

02.40. 02.06.11.

***


from the poem “Macbeth”

She stared at the hands for so long That the red sphere fell to the dark wood.
Or is it the board lights? Oh, God,
How the steel used to shine
In the hands of Thane’s bandits.
The centuries went trembling
With the horses’ clattering
And blood went clotting in the oceans,
And moonlight shone over it...
Stop!
It is a crime.
But isn’t criminal the life?
What for is now any doubt?
Since it is clear:
nothing is worth a nothing.
Moon, hold on in the cold sky...
But blood is pouring off the hands;
And this blood’s of no camertone,
It does not conform with
The verses and the silly talks.
The vital blood goes running down the keys,
And the ghost of the old man’s here... abreast...
Is it the way you count for might and laurels?
Stop, death!
And hold on, the life.
But does the word “life” count anything?
Only the calendar, the notebook, the thawed ice...
The trumpet sounds...
This also shall pass...
Everybody think: gone mad?..
Rather understood
how simple is the method
and where the question’s getting lost,
where the meaning is a point counter point,
petrified as a statue.
And that Macbeth killed for the gold... –
So they shall tell.
But who’s the eyewitness?
Who’s able
in five hundred years
to understand
that power is the philosophy
of a tank-cut
and the choice
between evil and the lesser evil?
That he did kill not for the crown –
but to bind himself in one knot with... the good.
And this is the Milestone,
the clattering shoes of the horses,
the singing golden dawn.
But why so much blood? And
what an evil prophecy the poet made me?
To go mad? Get lost in a book?
In the chords of the howling blues?
But the verses scratch the moon
through the broken shouts,
being bloody as the stains on the hands,
though... it is now enough about the verses.
I get asphyxiated by them already for ages.
They paint my hands red,
and the spectators howl in the theatre.
As the maddened, went rogue bitches.

03.20. 03.18.11.

***

My book, go fly
through the vastness of time
and the oblivion of the eternity,
through the shouts and the insults,
fly through the universe
and the unseen materia.
Over the heads of the proud
and the non-biased.
Fly to the city I was born in,
which the most of all I do like,
and then – over the whole country,
alike the knife
that ripped the wing
of a wounded bird.
My book, go fly,
piercing the space –
I won’t keep pace with you.
I leave you –
likewise whilst on the road 
one leaves what treasures the most,
if one really wants to come down.
My book, go fly!

13.40. 21.04.12.