russia

esidue count too high #1 [-]

(10/03/09 12:12:27)

ezOP

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in those days there were public
libraries in the midst of communities
connected by surface roads and cloverleaf.

we imported our souls from russia, a heavy
cream settled in a samovar.

played in art theaters to less than
sold out houses, recieved
enthusiastically by those that were there.
especially the white out finale.

the elevator went up and down. stravinsky
markets flowered the finer hotels, dostoevsky
was sold in the library basement for a dollar.

where ever europe walked: the joys
of capitalsim and the manners of the civiilized.
our women were allowed some thoughts.
we delighted in fragrances and steam baths.
a freshly mowed lawn. abs of steel.


"i won't answer for it; the depths of the female heart
have not been explored to this day"

then russia stepped in. oh russia, your coarse
blonde steppes, plumbago eyes. buxom and willing
to warm up in the cold. but the phone call
remained a mystery, unopened.

in those days culverts where a man could lie
and let the sun beat down on him
in private were scarce. in those days
cell phones masked the insane. someone
could be calling. even with the batteries dead.





*


she steps out of the cafe for a smoke. wishes they'd been seated outside instead of by the bar, where beer and wine and football are served, with a band of nervous turkey in the background. the space is cavernous, sports an unused mezzanine in her city there are minarets of silver, a tea room with copies of gorsky on the tables, a flayed horse of metal lays on its side beside US41. it has caused some controversy. she opens her cell phone in front of the sculpture, which at first glance is the side of an ant, but upon closer examination is the horse with its agony/ecstasy rictus. she holds the cell phone up to her ear. silence. she speaks into it, pulls on her camel light. pretends to listen, then talk, then listen. traffic rolls by less than two feet from where she stands on the sidewalk, tires hissing over a lightly sprinkled road. if they'd sat outside, the food would be damp. it's not so much she wants to be unapproachable as she wants to seem as if she doesn't need it. rapprochement. the line between genders breached. this is a pub. sometimes things like that happen. she studies the sculpture, decides ecstacy. her cigarette is done. it's been good talking to you she tells the mute phone. let's do this again some time. closes her personal communication device with a snap, and goes back inside, where the crowd and the music-loud, dancing, cheerful and drunk-provides a canvass for her silence.


































*






i had to take my car into the shop today. a headlite's been out for a while and a cop pulled me over last nite. the ticket, had he written it, would be one sixty. if he'd decided to inspect my car, the weed could have meant a trip to jail. oh well. some alt universe perhaps. russia, during the cold war period, let's say. america, in this post bill of rights era. luckily i had no current registration so he could write me up for that instead. only ten bux and a pain in my butt courthouse time. i rolled into ice cold auto air about ten. told them how i'd replaced the socket, replaced the bulb-twice because it's halogen she says, and i made sure i didn't touch the tip at all with the second one, he shakes his head it's not as fragile as they say-replaced the fuse with a known working one, and still only the high beams work can you check it out? he says can you leave it here for a while? sure, she nods. i'll walk over to the library. it's beginning to heat up indian summer after three days of florida fall (don't blink, you'll miss it) and the grass is that spectacular brand of deep neon green you can only see in nature as it's limned by road tar and tires.

russia's been on my mind ever since i saw cold souls on thursday. one of the characters is a russian mule that transports other people's souls into the USA for rent. half the movie was filmed in st. petersberg, in the winter, where the sky was the color of melting tundra. last nite the minarets of plant museum gleamed in the tampa sky, silver as a bullet, the moon a werewoman in a shades of gray babushka. i had dinne r with a nordic looking man, who liked the thai soup very much. and the coffee. he tells me how you can't have too many walls. i think of berlin. when i get home i notice the post about fdovstoev getting props and writing like a ..i was gonna say madman, but if it's poetry (and it is) that's redundant. feel like maybe i do know my ass from a hole in the ground. re poetry. re soul. re trusting my tastes.

on the way to the library i walk past the wrought iron fence of the buhddist temple. it's painted yellow, and all the structures within are also yellow. not lemon yellow or school bus yellow. some shade midway between the two. daffodil perhaps. i remember daffodils growing in the median of I95 the summer you were moving away, the summer i was moving out. the way they burst and whipped in the interstate wind. how the carolinas made your face less strict, as if going through the tunnel of pines as the sun rose to our right reminded you of something you once said you were going to do, but hadn't got around to yet. it was that kind of free light, opened upon small pass where we had met much earlier than we were supposed to. my skirt is the color of the flowers. the flowers are the color of the temple gates, where i stand, both in and out of the holy place at the same time, stalking god. a monk in robes tinted more orange, with a shaved head, walks in circles around a brightly painted twelve foot statue of guatama buhdda. he is seated lotus postition, the statue. he holds a lotus in his hand. he's made of garden concrete and hope. the face smiles , stoned.


to the east of the temple is an empty lot the size of an apartment complex. a culvert has been dug in the florida sand. there are florida sandspurs among the other bright green foliage. little bits of yellow from bee sized orchids dot the flat landscape. i want to smoke a bowl before i go into the library. the new library, with two stories, windows and a playground. have only seen it from outside. i walk down into the culvert, avoiding most of the burrs. the concrete is white as if had been just poured. metal bars slice across the openings, designed to keep discarded couches, stray shopping carts , bodies caught in a flash flood, from getting stuck in the ditch that runs under the sidewalk which traverses the lot on a manufactured berm. the sidewalk also looks newly poured. the early sun pours over the treeless lot. a dead weed, about 2 feet tall, provides enough shade for ants. there are no humans in the scene, but a monarch butterfly bumps along the small daisy bushes which sheild the back of the temple from nightfallen over the fence encroachments by TNC teens with spray cans and tags. i think about war and peace, flatness on the russian steppes, how a soldier might hide in the slightest dip in such an unremarkable landscape. last nite you said you see dark times coming and that we deserve it. i left you to your shadows, found a man with vodka on his tongue. he said i was right about that star beside the moon being jupiter. i save the information in notes on the floor of the culvert, imitating the art of desert sages who were left with only words when the wind stopped blowing.


in those days they raised a bit of money selling used books inside the library's lobby. hard backs for a dollar, paperbacks fifty cents. i find dovstoevsky in the poetry section. it's a novel but i think that's appropriate. this copy was printed in nineteen thirty six, and contains the unpublish/ed/able outtake that was not serialised during its first run in the progressive press from st. petersburg. too risque for the masses, i suppose. this draft is expurgated but the un does not survive so it will have to do. i pay a dollar and take the book upstairs into the library proper where a young child is crying in frusration somewhere in the children's section which is separated from the main library by doors that are not closed. everyone in the main library can hear the child being a brat. i wish a librarian would kick them out. the petulance darkens the eastern sun slanting in the upstairs windows. the colors are neutrals . the windows are deep and have sills which you can lay a book upon, lean over and read while the world passes by on the street below in the form of a blue toyota going over a speed bump, followed by a dark green jeep like you used to have before you drove it off the side of a mountain. tolstoy snickers behind me on the shelf. still thinking of t he inquires, with a sneer, tempered with a snicker. of him, i correct. why not? russians like to hold onto our melancholy. we pour it into a rinsed glass, mix it with vodka. tears are added to taste. some say it's much better if you can add someone else's to your own. when i arrive home, the history of civilization is a link away, and the composer of the music is stravinsky. i take the elevator to the top, pull out the possessed and sample this :

"you are a goddess of anitquity and i am nothing, but have had a glimpse of infinity.look on it as a poem and no more, for, after all, poetry is nonsense and justifies what we be considered impudence in prose.can the sun be angry with the infusoria if the latter composes verses to her from the drop of water...