New York City

Visiting L Russe Bezuhoff for a long weekend.
Mainly art and stuff. Got to see Russian Ark yesterday - fantastic. A single shot runs through a stream-of-consciousness narrative, set in the Hermitage, running from the 18th century to the present day.
Found poems from fridge to follow (magnetic poetry a-go-go).
Hopeless Americans already celebrating St Patrick's Day (not till 17th March)
Discovery of the day: Gays and Lesbians are not allowed to march at the regular St Patrick's Day parade in Manhatten. Fuckers.
Watching ancient Simon and Garfunkel footage on TV. Looks like they're on drugs. Bezuhoff keeps slapping Swiss Raven's arse in time to the music. Arf!
Return flight first thing tomorrow morning. Hope not to be stuck next to a passenger as boring as the last one: a trumpet-hunting socially-deficient physics student. I hate it when people live up to stereotype.
Over and out.

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Suburban Nightmares
a series of haiku

Dorothy touched up
her lipstick and then she did
the same to her son.
-
Whilst shaving, Albert
cut his nose off, ruining
the sky-blue carpet
-
Veronica hoped
Bill would come back in time to
see her suffocate.
-
A gas explosion
wrecked the fake Georgian façade
and killed the poodle.
-
Electronic gates
swung open to reveal a
badly-kept garden.
-
“Neighbourhood Watch” lived
up to their expectations:
Snooping and snide jibes.
-
Isn’t it tragic
that maids don’t come cheap these days –
unless they're foreign?
-
In acres of chintz
the corpse in their living room
hardly seemed fitting.
-
Rustic charm abounds
at lovely 60s semi
in the heart of Slough.
-
As if by muzak,
Reginald’s wig twitched in time
with Burt Bacharach.
-
“It’s MING, dear” said the
hideous blue-rinse of her
latest antique vase
-
Cyril’s gin-soaked voice
mellifluously mumbling
told of sex and lies.
-
“St Tropez – passé!”
exclaimed Eleanor. “We’re off
to Blackpool this year.”
-
The Sunday mowing
was interrupted when Dad
shredded the rabbit.
-
Highly pretentious,
Claude came to a sticky end
with a violin.

for Ezra Williams:

Shunning pashmina,
Pamela made her shroud from
bloody bandages.


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Poems from Russia: 1999-2000

The Snow Queen

I wish to recline on a bed of fresh snow;
Not just to squelch and squirm my way
Through mumbling masses of melting grey;
Gradually to feel my fingers, toes, wrists, ankles
Lose sensation,
Till at last only my heart burns –
A final candle alight in an
All-embracing chilly coffin.

Doll-like, my expressions trace out
the merest shadow of life:
frozen in time as in reality,
no longer betraying my inner secrets.

Until you touch my sapphire lips
With your rubies,
Nothing will distinguish me
from the wasting whiteness:
I shall remain attired in the
Mourning-wedding robes of my chosen destiny.


Moroz (hard frost)
for Rachel’s birthday

Never previously noticed
My window stands in
Flamboyant self-recognition.

What was once only a means to an end
Has now unleashed its innate purpose:

An outside world with diamonds concealed,
Existence in translucency revealed.


Resolution

Had I wished upon a star,
It could not have worked out better.

My convoluted heart has unwound itself;
Your all-rebuking face
No longer invokes my conscience –
The guilty knots undone by submission.

Control will not be hard
Unless we renew our harsh acquaintance,
And I begin to fall beneath your wheels.

And yet is there nowhere to run from myself?

Out , out, damned emotion!
And let all lie at peace and melancholy.


Krestovsky Island

Icicles in miniature
Adorn the crystal crust
Where once our world ended.

Instead the smothered sea
Announces new horizons
Of icy, briny waste.

Perceptible, brittle freedom
emerges from beyond the
stadium’s mighty cup:

Outside our boundaries lie
new sunny, glassy lands,
on which we ever fear to tread.


Translation of a poem by Marina Tsvetaeva
link to original in Russian

I rather like the fact that
You are not lovesick for me, nor I for you;
That we never feel this weary, dreary world
Swept from beneath our feet.
I rather like it that we can joke –
Be casual even – and not mince our words,
Nor blush with that asphyxiating wave of embarrassment
At the merest contact of our sleeves.

Indeed I rather like it that in front of me
You will happily embrace another woman
Without condemning me to the fires of hell,
To burn with envy for my not kissing you;
That, night and day, you never mention
My tender name – my dear- – in vain...
That, in a hushed church, of us will never be sung
Resounding matrimonial alleluias!

With my heart and hands I thank you
For loving me thus – without ever knowing it!
For my restful nights,
For the rarity of our meetings at sunset’s hour,
For our not enjoying strolls by the light of the moon,
For the sun not shining above our heads;
For the fact that you – alas! – are not lovesick for me,
And that I – alas! – am not lovesick for you.


Humbug

Not dreaming of a “White Christmas”,
Just like the ones we never knew;
Where the tinsel glistens
And no-one listens
To the songs of hearts broken in two.

Just dreaming of a “festive season”
Without those tacky, tawdry, trite
Tunes whose anodyne pleasure
Puts us at leisure
To forget the true of others’ plight.


Metro

Blue-green bullet shoots past,
confined by steel-bar rails:
a beacon home via sardine hell.

Fur-ball babushki make their presence felt as ever,
rolling on to their destination,
only to be spat out, rejected from the cat’s mouth of Avtovo
where bendy buses bumble by.


Vecherinka (A Party)

Isolation begins at home,
where drunken bouts of merriment
serve only to depress the sober legions down below.

Inconsequential conversation
will buffer us from passing pissheads:
their comments fall on self-blocked ears.

The blinded crowd disperses
at some obscene forgotten hour:
forged into easy twosomes,
later regretted, but deemed necessary
in the frenzied fight for beds.

At the scene of the crime,
some dishevelled half-corpse
snuffles, semi-somnolent
as guilty parties slip out the door.