How can you use the word pain

When your skin holds in its blood

Or tongue around the word lost

when you're here, where

You've always been

it's just a day like any day

the dark spit beyond the glass

artificial light, to keep you from sleeping

the city somewhere, out there


the curtains are so thin now

they let in more than glare

the headache's gone, there's something instead

to give you the sense of an end

write "nerves" coz that works every time, avanteur amateur paratour

I'm pretty down but it's ok because

now I know that I'm just

pretty down because I finally

did something with it, so I

can give it shape and fix

it with some words and it's

experience, so, sloppy, but it'll

mostly stay together and I'll

mostly stay together and there's

a long time to go, before I sleep

but I'm not worried, any more

stomach bug - gets me down - but I could see some sun from my window

A day so bleak you can taste it

And measure it with your nerves

Your glands become part of

the opening sky

As shudders hold in the light

nerves aren’t just a word

when it hold your eyes in light

and breathing is just breathing

when the pressure tricks its loss

back from dublin

...... the sign says "no swimming".....

.... which is funny not only becase it's frozen over (pictured) but because it's one of the dirtiest bodies of water in the city.....

....they have these little gondolas awkwardly float around the aluminium beer cans in the summer tho......

says the unpublished poet, at 6 am

the moments of creation

hurt because they drain

moments of frustration

hurt because they fill

this is still time - there is still time

the words have
weight
only –
when you believe
them

Because
assurance is
dry –
this blinking
in the dark

Insomnia Poem ... But Don't Worry About It okay Coz That Just Makes it Worse okay I'm Not worried I'm not Worried I promise

{{{blogger's being uncooperative so u just have to imagine an extremely artistic and expressive foto in this space}}}





Ah - release - from the voices

And melting - all

- that solid sleep

so foggy, so slush

I don't sleep

I just close my eyes

and concentrate

The clench is a tick

from the years undone

The blood, just

a memory of the sun

Fall Story in the City

Fear: and fear is in the air and fear is in the streets. Not far off over the low roofs fireworks are bursting and ricocheting through the narrow alleys glancing the windows and the second bursts lap the first and the third and they create the sensation of one prolonged, indefinite explosion: limbs flailing and hearts choking. The fireworks seem to be so close it’s unsettling that you can’t see any trace of them in the smothered dusk sky or down the impossibly-long slick shining streets. To one side is a three-story building with a stone facade and rows of columns and on the other is a row of shops and it smells like rain and wet leaves and what might be an Italian restaurant. You’d expect at least a spark of firework light on the sides of the shops or up on the columns but you can’t see anything and you don’t even know where to look because you can’t tell which was the original sound and which was the echo.

And the blood jumps: the young man coming out of one of the alleyways between the shops tries to walk through his unsettled blood and clings his black jacket to his body just as a stream of orange neon light flows down his forehead to his jaw to his knees. He walks from the alley and across to the three-story building and then towards the square and checks, habitually, phone and wallet, wallet and phone, because the square he can see is teeming with bodies – and the noise of the bodies – in the middle of it there’s an awkward-looking stage set up that probably looks fine from television cameras but from here it just looks awkward and only now does he hear the music coming from the speakers.

The crowd volume has been turned up by the sound system so the crowd they hear is louder than the crowd is; strange, he thinks. Strange that I only just now noticed the music. And strange that I can’t see any trace of the fireworks, not even a glance.

There is physical danger – all around him, sharp edges and hard rocks – a horrible night. He should have gotten a taxi back at the cafe he thinks – now he would be embarrassed to tell the driver where he’s headed because it’s less than a twenty-minute walk and he still has both legs and both arms. Also the longer he’s home the more time he has to make a certain phone call so all in all it’s best to be out, walking. And fear is after all a stupid thing to feel or to admit feeling to yourself if you’re not being bombed or tortured, he tells himself, again. And so he keeps walking through the bodies:

“...just fucking so many fucking guys who...”

“...no, it hurt, it hurt, but when he...”

“...oh, my God, cause when I went in...”

And he walks by an open door at the corner of a building on the edge of the square and out of the door a group of six or seven drunken teenagers with leather jackets and modern haircuts spills out, hands on shoulders. Their hair is high in the middle, too hip for the jackets, and this incongruity speeds the young man’s heart while he focuses on the speed of his breathing.

“Hey,” one of them says, malice and booze almost squeezing his eyes out of the sockets, “Got a smoke?”

“I don’t smoke,” says the young man, “Sorry.”

The teenager spits straight in front of him and exchanges a meaningful glance with someone over his left shoulder and is about to say something but the young man keeps walking and checks, phone, wallet, and for a moment he braces his fists and bends his legs a little more at the knees and readies his hands to come flying out of his jacket pockets and protect his temples like his dad had showed him. The teenagers move on and one of them howls and one of them throws a bottle and they move away, and then the young man realizes to his surprise, his hands becoming even tighter, that there are two girls with the gang – skinny with tight-fitting jeans and splices of bare lower back and even an ever-so-slight amount of string exposed to the eye. Or to touch, thinks the young man to himself but with the kind of internal laughter that makes him feel worse and empty.

And the night is still fear, just deepening and the moment when he comes home and takes off his messenger bag and brushes his teeth and stares out the window at the dark rooftops from the thirteenth story is a little closer and another firework goes off and the young man continues on into the square.

“Ridiculous,” he thinks, “but I’m a part of it, still a part of it. A part of it yet.”

Jack had come from the affluent suburbs, not from the city he usually said he was from, mostly for the convenience of it, nor one of the smaller towns and you could tell from how he walked down the street: he knew these streets well, but only in the way one from the suburbs could know them, without the cocky taken-for-grantedness that separated the city kids nor the not-embarrassed-to-admit-that-you’re-still-overwhelmedness the country kids had. With every turn, Jack’s gaze lingers a moment too long and it still goes a little too high but he tries his hardest to simulate the urban cockiness and that’s what always gives him away. And he’s walking, now, a little too fast through the pulsing square.

He had moved to the city because of a girl, he often told himself. She was beautiful (dark hair bright eyes), witty, lazy and terrible with money that usually wasn’t hers. But she would come into a party – any party – and the mood would change – because of her. She would adjust herself just a little for the occasion and act without apology and the party and the men and the women would change because of her – an amazing thing to watch and Jack had loved her for that. He could carry a party, too, when his mood was right, when he had the nerves and the energy to mold himself enough for the circumstances. But the way she moved her slim hips and carried her sparkling voice were of course something different altogether. If you took a picture of her and posted it on a dating site, some guys might fall for her. If you put her at the end of a well-stocked table, she could have her pick of the crowd.

“I can’t believe that some people still refuse to believe that we’re just different, men and women. Like, there are so many more male geniuses, guys who are truly exceptional, than women, just by their nature. No seriously, seriously – wait for me to finish. Women are so rarely geniuses. We just aren’t and that’s why there aren’t so many famous women artists or writers, not because of sexist institutions holding us back. Seriously. But then we’re hardly ever morons.” And she’d say it in such a way that even the white-capped frat boys would want a piece and the guys would lean in and the girls would wait for their chance to bring the attention back to their corner. That was the thing about Sarah: she always had the men leaning in and the girls leaning just a little out. And he came up on a group of pretty girls just as he was thinking about the first party he had ever seen Sarah at. Flashes of skin above the jeans, slim necks, dark eyes.

“If you had only seen me with her you might look up, at me,” Jack imagined saying to the 16 year-old girls gathered around a single ipod and taking pulls from two paper-bagged flasks but he knew they wouldn’t look up at him, because he wasn’t the kind of young man that 16-year-olds with an ipod and two flasks would up look at – he was the kind that had to earn the benefit of the doubt first.

And that was the paradox about Sarah – when he was with her he could, in theory, have the pick of almost any girl he wanted. Without her when he was, in theory, free but they didn’t look up. And they hadn’t been now for many months.
But Jack was still young and he could still comfort himself with the idea that he was interested in experiences and one just had to amass experiences and every day was a new experience even feeling like a fraud every time you walk into a bar. And, he thought, something would have to happen one of these days, something would have to happen sometime soon. Anything you saw or read about young men coming to the cities decisively proves that something would happen. First there is experience and then there are happenings and then you get to write about all you survived.

Just give me something to survive, thought Jack. Besides Sarah.

And now he was walking on through what he thought was a short-cut and the sounds of the square were receding and the sounds were being replaced by all the threats of bodily harm that could come to Jack as he walked, it filled the space up even more than the bodies on the square: cars veering, bits of building falling, manholes slipping, knives plugging his back.
He had come to New York for Sarah, that is true, but he had also come for the sake of his precious experiences. He had arrived in the city, still in love, but not having seen her in over a year.

Her emails had been strange: brisk, inconsistent, yet vaguely implying that what had been felt between them could still and would still be felt. It was a vagueness that hadn’t exactly bothered Jack because he had been busy and nervous on his own end and the emails were just something to be experienced just like Sarah, he was sure, would be later on. On one hand, he wanted to write back enthusiastically and gushing and pledge everything to her because he vaguely understood, even at that time, that she was being brisk because she wanted him to commit the move and promise his love and pronounce his intentions to be very serious – though Jack, still young, hadn’t paused to think about whether she would still want him after he had done all that she had asked. On the other hand, he knew he couldn’t promise her anything because he couldn’t pronounce the necessary words without feeling the cold clutches of doubt and feel, vaguely, like he was lying to her. So Jack carried on, writing back occasionally and promising nothing, just that he would someday get to New York City himself – being vague, inconsistent, and brisk in his own time.

“Hey, sweets, really haven’t heard from you in forever you naughty boy I’m just going out, again.” She wrote once.

“God, drinking as much as ever, I see? I bet you beat them off with sticks. I drank half a bottle of Jameson last night, and thought about you.” He responded, two weeks later.

His reasoning behind his lack of commitment, which had still seemed to him like a kind of a definite end, as if he would write Sarah that he was ready to commit and immediately they’re be having family night in with two young children on their Saturday evenings, was that he needed to dull himself to the urges he had beyond Sarah. If he could only be free from his own desires to drag off all of the girls who looked up at him when he was at the parties with Sarah, if only he could take the best-looking girl from the bar home by himself a few times and check his burning imagination that it wasn’t all as good as it was in those magazine stories and his daydreams right before he would fall asleep next to her, then he could make something very meaningful with Sarah. But not, he had convinced himself, not until then because the words would ring false.

He would be able to take Sarah up and promise her forever once he had “burned away the doubt.” “Lost the mystique,” was another popular phrase in his head, something gleaned from a literature class he had taken in college.

So he had known the girls with the ipod wouldn’t look up, and he knew what it would be like if he went into a bar right now, and it dawned on him – right here and there on this side-street in the wet fall air – that maybe he hadn’t lost Sarah because of his inability to commit but that maybe he never really could have had her. Even if he went out and bought a ring right now – right now, in some 24-hour jewelers down one of these impossibly-long slick side streets – she wouldn’t want him and he would still have the doubt about her and about the prettiest girls in the bars. And it was all even more confusing than that.

The street was dark: out of it rippled voices: and gleaming apartment windows on the second and third stories. And in the dizzy shadows the voices gradually gave way to more bodies, sitting on the curb and smoking. There were so many objects around that could hurt you.

For example, the guy holding the bottle in the sack could hurt you with the bottle.

Broken, it hurts more. The group of big guys to his left could hurt him in numbers. And the brunette he sees on his right, so bored standing there smoking with tired-looking eyes that will look very ugly a few years from now but at this moment don’t detract from the legs she has under the tight black mini-skirt and she’s just looking straight forward and smoking. You want to talk her to her but there’s nothing to say, so you continue on, hating that those slim legs hold any sort of power over you.

Sarah has some boyfriend in Boston and Jack had just come to the city to see if his plan would work or if it would fail and now it was all failing. And every day he left the house, expecting something to happen to him. It was New York City, and there was always the chance that he would meet another mostly-pretty girl like he did back in the suburbs and he wouldn’t be that excited about it but she would be and it would all be fine for a few weeks and then it would be bad for a few weeks and then he’d be going to bars alone again. The mostly-pretty girls were usually a little thickish, and they couldn’t hold down the table or the dinner table or the bartable like Sarah with her crystal laughter and her telling a group of stupid men that girls weren’t usually geniuses – these girls were usually the ones leaning out. But then again, Sarah isn’t everything, he told himself as he took another turn down a street and felt the fall night wind on his face and squinted as some leaves kicked up, she wasn’t everything – she was skinny, but not healthy-skinny and had a little wobbly pouch of a stomach that was conspiring to plop out in concentric waves of bellyfolds sometime in her thirties. She was pretty, he thought, but not as pretty as she thought, and she was weak, very physically weak, if we had children, the children would be poor athletes and he screwed up his eyes because that was such a stupid thought and wanted to drive his head through a pane of glass. Sarah was probably on the phone with Boston right now. And this was good, because it left Jack without Sarah. And that was good because it would be best if I could live without her.

He turned down another street, one that he would walk down if he got the bus up to the stadium, and he considered stopping in the bar for a whiskey but it didn’t seem like a good idea, it was a holiday day, and there was probably a baseball game on, and it would be crowded and he wouldn’t be able to get a drink at the bar and sit and drink it. This street looked strangely like the one he had come out of the alleyway towards the square onto: row of shops and the bar on one side, three-story encolumned building on the other.

It’s good she’s on the phone with Boston, he thought, but goddamn her eyes....

Her eyes were nice –since he had gotten to New York they had fucked four times, and each time Jack had tried to be revolted, he had tried to think of her wobbly belly and how much guilt he would feel about it the next day or the mess of her apartment or how she’d probably ask to borrow money afterwards or back to the wobbly stomach but he would slip off her skinny little panties and feel her fingernails in his hair he knew they were painted red and he would look up her stomach and put one hand on her thigh with the fingers glancing in on the skin and her eyes would catch him right there and he knew he wouldn’t regret it he knew he would feel numb and want more of her eyes and the taste on his tongue as she said “yes, yes, eat me, Jack.” And he would end up remembering the eyes, goddamn it, when there were so many other things to be remembered.

If only she knew what I think about when we’re at parties, he thought, with a little grin, glad it was too dark for the people behind their bright third-story windows to see this ridiculous gesture. But then, he added, and almost stopped walking, what if that’s what she’s thinking, too? and just at that moment, almost stuttering as his legs took up the thought and spun it out to his toes and shoulder-joints, he passed a 30ish brunette on her cell phone. She looked stupid: her voice was stupid when she said, “oh my God, I’m going to get you for that!” and that was stupid to say (of course women are rarely geniuses) but he knew that even though he thought she was stupid there was no way he could impress her, there was no way he could have the stupid bobbed brunette and then leave her, and this depressed him greatly. So he walked faster on and resolved what he wouldn’t think about.

He had been waiting in cafes, for example, for something to happen, he thought as he passed the cafe where he would get French bread if he was walking downtown. He would find a table after ordering a double espresso, sit back with his notebook and possible scenarios for sketch comedy routines or film plots – and even though he wasn’t trying he would strain his ears to hear the conversation between the two cute girls at the nearby table. He had sat at such tables at such cafes now for three months in New York, stretching out, pulling out, and coming back together a little looser each time, and he thought up all kinds of conversation introductions, like: “Hey, sorry, do either of you know who won the Yankee game today?” or “Pardon me, is that real sugar you put in your latte Holy Fucking Shit That’s Amazing” or “do either of you know a good Chinese restaurant in the area – I’m new here” but each time he imagined what that would sound like to him if he heard some lone guy at a nearby table saying that to the cute girls in the cafe and it made Jack cringe.

He took a deep breath and suddenly felt extremely disoriented.

And he looked up and he noticed that he was cringing just thinking about it – and he also noticed he was back on the square – he had turned right when he should have gone left and he was walking out towards the crowd again and the fireworks were subsiding but the music was getting louder. He still was thinking about what he might say in the cafe now catching a few more drunken askance eyes – he looked up to the chafed sky this hemmed-in sky of noise and wondered how he had gotten back here and how he should leave it.

The lone guy at the table! But how could that be him? After all, he had been with beautiful women. And he had been with Sarah and she would no doubt do well as an actress if she could only overcome her laziness. And clean up her goddamn kitchen.

The square surges, almost a parody of itself, as Jack turns and tries to pick his way out again, the singer sings to the audience so their cheering can be piped back at them so the people will listen to the singer because people are cheering for her. It hurts, to think ha ha ha – and if I’m so smart then why are those two blondes talking to that tall guy in glasses with the flipped-hipster collar and not me oh it hurts!

Steely, hand-crank night – and fear still on the streets the sweeping square of low buildings and all the New Yorkers under twenty seem to be out here, no, better to make no eyes contact, better to stop wandering, better not to go into the bar and just go home. Just get home and shower and sleep and tomorrow maybe something will happen. But God, to get past all of these people, again, the monotonous faces, the tobacco-spit eyes and short arms – But then the street that Jack needs get home quickest has been closed in the last twenty minutes it seems, he can see from far away the red-candy barricades set up and the three police officers standing guard, automatics at their side; cool, low, steely buildings to their other side.

And all on top of it this ridiculous music – and Jack wishes for a second that he could find something in it, that he could feel something in his body to hear the ridiculous canned beats and join them and be part of them –

And so: with a swallow and a half and a breath it’s off to where you just came from, back towards the cafe you sometimes go if you’re walking downtown for the French bread down to the side-streets: which are dark and dreary still but there’s nothing you can do about it but walk. Jack walks diagonal near the stage and passes five kids

- yeah, fucking, cause –

- no, totally fucking a guy, and –

And it’s on to the side-streets: deep, dark winding streets with higher buildings on either side: they’re not apartments, not shops, not offices, and not empty. This area is incomprehensible. Each successive block bears the mark of inhabitance but the odd signs you see down these streets read:

“Form 2138-02X for year 8-5”

“Center of center Right and Studies”

And this only hits Jack’s nerves harder – how did I get down here? – for a second he vaguely considers calling someone he knows to get out of this alley. Of course, anyone but Sarah. But he doesn’t know anyone in New York he could call from an alley and then ever talk to again.

He pulls out his phone after checking for his wallet and calls information.

“Information, what city please?”

“New York, New York.”

“One moment, please,” there is a brief antiseptic ring and Jack takes the moment to duck into a shadow, by a sign reading
“City Poliklinik 7”

And he thinks, maybe I should call Sarah? Maybe it wouldn’t be all that bad to be down her pants instead of out here. But, no, he remembers, if I want to be down her pants I can’t get there. It’s only when I don’t want it that it happens but she convinces me I want it and she makes me seem like it’s all my idea and then it’s okay and I just feel numb.

“What listing please, for New York, New York?”

“I need a taxi,” he says, counting on his being able to explain his location by his surroundings. He looks for another sign but it’s dark.

“One moment please.”

“Thanks,” he wants to say but it’s already ringing through and the girl is gone and maybe she was free later on tonight.
More teens come and pass down the alley on the other side of the street. One younger girls in pig-tails but with a dirty, experienced look in hungry eyes that somehow seem different one from the other goes down the other side, strutting, with her palms up like she’s in a soda-commercial – three older men trail her, smiling with bags of fast food, and they’re definitely with her and they have baseball caps for various football teams and paunches over jeans and leather belts.

The phone keeps ringing, and then:

“You have reached Amadarin Amadakhba. Leave me a message.”

Jack pauses even though the message beep has long beeped.

“Amadarin,” he finally says, “my name is Jack. Look, Amadarin, I’m in the alley by Loobin Square next to Poliklinik 7. I’m wearing a black jacket and I need you to drive me home.”

And he walks further down the alley and almost turns left, but then remembers if he goes right he make it through the park a lot easier.

And he realizes it’s all close to collapsing, this city, it’s all close to winding in around him and bursting into flames so hot they burn the skies and he would be a part of its ash. Someone could strangle the lights out of me right now and what could I do about it?

Jack takes the left and briefly considers calling Sarah.

Fuck Boston, he thinks, and fuck these side streets and fuck the smell of fresh-cut park grass in the fall and cool nightly moisture and fuck the fear that I’m definitely feeling. He takes a right, and then a left and finds himself on a larger-looking street which, he thinks, is the right direction to go but he can’t see the street name. The sudden weight of all of these portents hits Jack square in the stomach: fear, danger, and he thinks again how easy it would be for some drunk hobo with a knife or a loose piece of scaffolding or a piece of ill-fitting glass to stop his little heart. But that isn’t the half of it: it’s the city air, the air that hits his lungs every time like those inhalers that expand everything and leave you dizzy O God, he thinks, I’m fucking lost.

He walks past a street lamp, and then another. Then a bus stop and two old ladies sleeping on the bench, facing each other.

“It’s not that cold,” he thinks he hears one say, “it’s not that cold at all. Last year – h” But the wind picks up.
O, God, bleakness, O, God, get home. And don’t call Sarah, please, for Christssake, don’t call her because she’ll just tell you you interrupted a call from Boston and she’ll call you back sometime and she’ll love that you called her though she won’t call you back.

He decides to pull out the map that’s in his backpack – and it’s a desperate move, being from the suburbs to pull out a fucking map. And he unfolds it awkwardly, standing there in the wind by the bus stop near the two old women and he unfolds it awkwardly, and tears one of the corners. He looks at it for a long while because the light is dim and his hands are shaking.

He hears giggling behind him – fast feet, clothes in the wind. Sounds like two of them.

“Hey, hey you,” a voice rings out, clear and girlish and liquid and surprising after hearing the old woman speak and he turns, slowly, careful with the map.

It’s two girls he’s sure he’s seen before, somewhere back on the square somewhere but he can’t place it exactly and he doesn’t have long to think: he has to react with his face and his voice. It’s the blonde who spoke, she has a rectangular face with some pock-marks and huge dull eyes even when she giggles, which she does again, and she looks at the girl next to her slyly and holds her by the arm and then looks back at me, “Hey,” she continues, advancing with the girl still by the arm, “do you know how to get to the China Town Underpass?” and she giggles even more. Her knees sway against each other slightly and she’s wearing jeans but there’s something under there. The friend, looking straight at her, is a short brunette in a tube-like dress, and they laugh a little more. They must both be about 16.

“I was just trying to figure that out myself,” says Jack for lack of anything else to say because he does have to say something and he watches the knees sway. “I think you just take this next right down there.”

They both look at him smiling because he didn’t answer the question.

“And would you happen to be heading down there yourself?” asks the brunette in a big-girl voice, her face still frozen in a mask of amusement, the blood pinched out, and the blonde smiles as her friend says this without giggling and Jack can feel something approaching him from behind and he feels it tighten his fists and his groin. The fists crumple the map at the edges.

And he feels for a second, what it would be like to have his tongue on the brunette.

“Sorry, I’m headed the other direction,” he says quickly, and moves: stepping away: and he’s already on the street and the solid black ground. He doesn’t look back but he knows – the girls are both standing with their mouths spliced open almost like clowns he hears giggling more giggling just don’t look back but he can’t see their mouths moving and the sky will crash down the sky will crash down and burn this all to ash and him along with it.

And then they are off, arm in arm, in the other direction, they disappear into the sudden fog of the night and the dazzling brightness of the slick distance while he crosses the street in a jog and checks behind him again: there wasn’t anyone else there. There was nothing there. He pauses, feet on pavement, and feels the wind, and feels the months of his life in the city.
Oh God, there is nothing for me here, and now the waiting just begins again.
And he hurries off towards home, where he showers and sleeps.

What I just told you was a true story. I didn’t want to tell you that but it is – I just altered the names and the city and a few meaningless details that don’t change anything, at least about me. I am a coward.

Yeah, you like that, don't you dollar? Yeah? Yeah, bitch?

A postcard advertising Finance Magazine. Our poor Dollar. The Ruble is probably the one taking the picture.

khelloweev pik

a scene from a week ago saturday - moscow - real mccoy's. I was a devil bt most of my costume was ransacked in the first hour and I ended up in just a tight black shirt and a Soviet hat.

farewell to arms farewell to arms - fog rolls in covering the slick yellow surfaces, neon

hunger has never sharpened me

mr hemingway

I’ve tried it a time or two

instead of all colors

sharpening into focus

and the landscapes

locking smell and texture

I feel

all dull and bad

staggering around

but then I’ve never

shot myself either

two variants of one fragment

Did you - feel bad doing it then -

Did you not - feel life -

With - all of that heart -

Behind your bone

But just - your brain -

To spin -





It's a question of will

That an answer of want

Did you feel bad doing it then

Did you not feel, life

I'll show you the life of the mind

A fall night, the fog rolls in during a brief warm spell before we're back to hovering just above zero. Have been writing many stories this past week (3), will post the beginnings to some soon.

nerves are good

they get you through

the day

while raw on the penile

and stiff in the lip

at least

you'll

have something to say

fall day / in the city

warm day, plus 14 centigrade, sky clear and promising, so I went out for a walk to take some pictures between my gym on the 8th story of a glassy building and dinner at City Cafe #1, where they didn't bring me my fries but tried to charge me for them anyways and the espresso was tall and thick, but tasted way too Russky and they did that annoying thing where they play music videos on the tvs above and in front of you but have totally different music on, too loudly.

another *hilarious* moscow post

have had a strange day so far: woke up with intentions of collecting money owed by my magazine, but ended up drinking more coffee than I could process and rereading my MA thesis and wondering about returning to graduate school in the states at some point. and this after I thought I had a clear plan of flitting to and fro european and chinese capitals for a while.

damn, which one is capitol and which one is capital? I can seriously never remember.

see, I'm trying to make this sound like an actual blog.

below is another in my series of hilarious moscow photos. it's the checkout line at my local supermarket (called Alphabet of Taste) - and here you can of course see the impulse-purchase section, where there's the standard gum, candy bars, breath mints and... pregnancy tests?



[that would be the evitest in the top left]


isn't that *hilarious*?

if I were a real blogger I'm sure I could come up with some hilarious dialogue wherein some couple decides to get a bag of M&Ms and a few evitests while waiting in line, but odds are you already have a pretty good one running in your own head so I'll leave it at that.

the sun might burn my eyes

after all those days in bed

the grass may sting

the nerves on my leg

under the headstone sky

so see the sun / they always say

powerful bankers - telling each other jokes

in a private room of a moscow Tex-Mex joint

And I'm sitting next to them

trying to earn my tequila

with a story or two that falter

"Another time when I was on Aeroflot-"

"A lot of my Jewish friends in Israel-"

And I can't listen to myself anymore

Just as unthinkable as to

Say nothing at all

so I dig into the bland chili con carne

with the homemade authentic corn chips

Try to think of a good toast

And wait for the moment when I

blink my eyes

And I'm in a fast car, going somewhere

Pasta la Vista, baby

Classic phenomenon in the city: here are the operating hours of a pasta kiosk (Pasta la Vista - and, in case you're wondering if the reference is intentional, they have a Terminator poster on their back door).

It says it operates round the clock.

Except for a "Technical Break" between 4 and 9 am...

Beginning of a short story XXX part II

The hull was still capable of movement, and the sailors hunched against a gaping black wave for a second too long, as if out of brief, tacit amazement that the ship could stay afloat with only four of them remaining. Jenkins had somehow assumed that if the crew were to disappear, so would the boat, a body deprived of its brain – but here it was, right under their feet, lifting them up again.

The captain was the first to return to his senses. He braced his good leg ahead into the little pivot he had worn so deliberately and well into the wood and looked hard at the three sailors clutching at the ropes before him, his sopping, shaggy eyebrows almost blocking out his hard green drinking eyes.

“Not good, not good at all,” he roared and Jenkins could barely make out what he was saying though he was only a few paces away. “Not good but by God there still be breath of all of you, so we sail one. A hundred curses, Jenkins!” he barked even louder and pointed Jenkins to secure one of the riggings which he did.

“By God above the crew’s got to be here somewhere! Not a soul on deck in a squall like this and I’ll have their meat in chains if we survive the day!” He paused to choke on a little water that had sprayed him during the speech.

Jenkins stood by Boxer, who looked like some highlander out of Scott, the kind that climb a mountain with one enormous, sinewy hand while drinking and shooting out of the other. Next to him was Haven, dark and soaked and looking something like a rat with gentle beetle eyes. Boxer always swore Haven was almost his match in strength, but he somehow didn’t look it on the barren deck with his shimmering clothes clinging to his body. Jenkins was the youngest by almost five years.

“By God,” said the captain, finally regaining the ability to speak, “By God, men, it’s easy enough to sweep this ship and find where those cowards are and to the man who finds them by God you have the right to shoot first and ask questions later. Just leave man enough to man the top, but the rest can taste your steel and your fire, the unworthy scoundrels. Boxer, you take the storage and the mess. Haven, you’re in the cots. And by God and Heaven above I’ll take engineering, so,” he said, turning after he pronounced the word ‘engineering’ which left a ringing in Jenkins’ ears, “Jenkins, you’re at the helm. We’ll bring you friends enough to like but not enough to hate.”

Just as he finished the orders the ship coasted up a swell and then sank into a pocket of ocean, coming down, it seemed to Jenkins, not all in one piece and two of the seamen fell to the deck. The sky is muddy, Jenkins thought from his back with his hands on the slippery cold wood to avoid sliding starboard, and it’s hard to tell which way is up.

Adventure Title

The water swelled and yet another voice had gone missing, the captain wheeled around his pivot and stared hard at the three sailors still on deck through the wind and the rain and the hurtling gloom.

A spray of water loosened itself from the hissing beyond the rails of the ship and slammed across the deck, beating plank and skin and flailing rope. The darkness seemed to surge with a whip and the ship suddenly fell. It was the strangest feeling for Jenkins, this falling – it felt like the ship would never land but rather sink through the sea and plants and earth and into space which had to have more light than here.

The boat, in the free-fall, under heavy storm, felt like a skeleton.

There was a clear moment, as Jenkins felt his organs rise and his bones fall, when he was aware of some kind of movement just beyond his vision, something different from the forms and movement of the storm – it was measured and unhurried and all that you could fear in the dark. But it was gone just as quickly as he noticed it, and Jenkins chastised himself for his fantasies just before the ship finally landed hard to end the fall, leaving the deck with the noise of the storm, the spasms of the wind, the ropes undone from their sinks, and heavy water.

The hull was still capable of movement, and the sailors hunched against a gaping black wave for a second too long, as if out of brief, tacit amazement that the ship could stay afloat with only four of them remaining. Jenkins had somehow assumed that if the crew were to disappear, so would the boat, a body deprived of its brain – but here it was, right under their feet, lifting them up again.

The captain was the first to return to his senses. He braced his good leg ahead into the little pivot he had worn so deliberately and well into the wood and looked hard at the three sailors clutching at the ropes before him, his sopping, shaggy eyebrows almost blocking out his hard green drinking eyes.

“Not good, not good at all,” he roared and Jenkins could barely make out what he was saying though he was only a few paces away. “Not good but by God there still be breath of all of you, so we sail one. A hundred curses, Jenkins!” he barked even louder and pointed Jenkins to secure one of the riggings which he did.

“By God above the crew’s got to be here somewhere! Not a soul on deck in a squall like this and I’ll have their meat in chains if we survive the day!” He paused to choke on a little water that had sprayed him during the speech.

Jenkins stood by Boxer, who looked like some highlander out of Scott, the kind that climb a mountain with one enormous, sinewy hand while drinking and shooting out of the other. Next to him was Haven, dark and soaked and looking something like a rat with gentle beetle eyes. Boxer always swore Haven was almost his match in strength, but he somehow didn’t look it on the barren deck with his shimmering clothes clinging to his body. Jenkins was the youngest by almost five years.

“By God,” said the captain, finally regaining the ability to speak, “By God, men, it’s easy enough to sweep this ship and find where those cowards are and to the man who finds them by God you have the right to shoot first and ask questions later. Just leave man enough to man the top, but the rest can taste your steel and your fire, the unworthy scoundrels. Boxer, you take the storage and the mess. Haven, you’re in the cots. And by God and Heaven above I’ll take engineering, so,” he said, turning after he pronounced the word ‘engineering’ which left a ringing in Jenkins’ ears, “Jenkins, you’re at the helm. We’ll bring you friends enough to like but not enough to hate.”

Just as he finished the orders the ship coasted up a swell and then sank into a pocket of ocean, coming down, it seemed to Jenkins, not all in one piece and two of the seamen fell to the deck. The sky is muddy, Jenkins thought from his back with his hands on the slippery cold wood to avoid sliding starboard, and it’s hard to tell which way is up.

“Jenkins, a thousand curses, and by God, get on your feet! Hold this ship right or so help me you’ll be sleeping with the rest of the crew at the bottom of the blue sea. The rest of ye, get on with your search and find the men for me to string up.”

And they left, groping their way along rope and rail and down into the underbelly of the ship and Jenkins was alone at the helm in the cold spray, struggling for grounding and bearing in the howling darkness like under a high fever when the cold tickles your face. And he felt bad, bad and alone and he was somehow sure there weren’t any men to be found.

The darkness felt empty and he was empty and now he could tell which way was sky and which way was ocean but it didn’t matter.

Finally, he said out loud, “The hell this ship is deserted,” but it somehow didn’t ring true and he felt even worse after saying it.

Just then another mass of giant shape seemed to loom in the darkness, near as starboard stern and then even closer and then gone. It had been methodical, thought Jenkins, it wasn’t of the storm or even, he thought with a shudder, of the sea.

“The goddamn hell this ship is empty,” he said, but he couldn’t even hear it.

Staring into the shadows taxed Jenkins eyes which filled with the pelting beads and hammers of the salt-water spray and his eyes were the only things that hurt more than his ears. Jenkins had been at sea long enough to hold himself upright at the helm, but not enough not to feel panic, sheer and gutting, every time he went blind from the rain and the sea.

It was during one of these attacks, his heart so big it hurt, where the soft parts of his chest seemed hopelessly swollen and hollow, that his bones and nerves were struck by a sound off port that made him wince. It was a sound not of sea, not of man, not of bird, and not of thunder. It was a sound too deliberate for nature and too eerie for animal and came from right off the side of the rail.

He realized he had been alone far too long.

The boat lurched as if to mark all that was going on in his head, the worn wood spun out to fill in the deck and rigging and beams and all the details that should make up a boat. Standing there, a lone, soaked, shivering figure at the helm of a great, deserted ship, it seemed just as likely that there would be no ship as there would be no mates around him. But the wood was solid beneath him, and he still held the wheel in his hands.

Jenkins stood at the helm, watching the rigging and sinkers and rope come undone around him and the deck took on more water and he stood there without intentionally moving until it all finally seemed possible.

And then he thought, just as he went blind once more and his ears rung, it was the most absurd thing in the world to continue to stand there and man the helm. The only reason one should be standing there was out of duty or out of obligation but there was no such thing as either anymore and Jenkins knew he was the only speck of heat within a few hundred miles in any direction.

He thought quickly about the dolphins, as he had heard that they have heat, and whales, too – but the way the ocean raged and spit it seemed yet another impossible thing that it could actually harvest life and Jenkins saw that he was still standing at the helm.

And he saw a few more things, his hands bearing down on the wood and his fingers digging in with the nails, that there were only a few possibilities for where he was: if this was a dream then it didn’t really matter what he did, he could fling himself off the side or leave the helm to the whim of the squall, of just close his eyes and wait for something to change. If he was awake, then he had either gone mad and was imagining all of this so anything he were to do was equally without consequence – if he was actually at the helm of a boat someone would surely come by and forcibly remove him, the madman – or if he wasn’t mad and he was alone then his fate was sealed, out at sea as far as they were and with the water they were taking on and the pieces of ship tearing off into the darkness. And there could also be no consequences at all.

Then there is no such thing as suicide, he thought and shivered and remembered the sound off of port.

There was just one thing to do, he knew – he had to search the ship, to go under, and only then could he be satisfied that he had done all he should have done in the squall.

He left the wheel to spin as it might, which it did, and crawled through the howling darkness on his hands and knees, eyes clenched and mouth involuntarily gulping down mouthfuls of seawater which somehow didn’t taste like it should – it was all bitter. His ears were clogged and ringing still.

A strip of the waterproof caught onto a splintered plank as he approached the ladder, and just then the sound rang out from almost directly above him, it was something like a tight cable snapping along with the wailing of women in a language you don’t understand and it came from right above him but he looked up and there was nothing there but rain and somewhere far beyond it the stars and he started coughing.

Not waiting any longer for his imagination to get the best of him, nor enough to wait until the coughing subsided, Jenkins lurched at the ladder, but either his fingers failed him or the ship hit a rough pocket and Jenkins went sprawling elbow-first into the top rung of the ladder and then fell down through the hatch.

There was no way to tell how long he had been out when he came to: the boat was rolling and Jenkins was still wet. It was either much quieter down here or his ears had adjusted to the sounds or both. He didn’t notice the cold first, or the darkness below, or the miscellaneous ship objects rolling around – instead he was aware only of the emptiness and silence of the room. He had to look up the ladder to the hatch to the storm above to assure himself he was in the right place.

It wasn’t that it was silent, for there was storm. And it wasn’t that it was empty, because there were objects, like candles and pots and cups. It was empty and silent of crew and Jenkins shuddered.

It was a room usually filled with bodies and cursing and drinking and sleeping, and even when the entire crew was asleep there were still the sounds of rattling and breathing and stretching, all the sounds you hear when you don’t think you hear anything but that convince you there are people around. That you are not alone, thought Jenkins on his back, smelling a little of his own blood because his senses were very sharp and he was smelling and breathing and hearing and tasting it all.

Jenkins stood up slowly and painfully and groped around until he found a way to light the room. The shadows that played around the room were horrifying: cold and vacant and the objects that were illuminated were worse yet. All the things here for sailors, handles to be held, seats for sitting – but nothing except for the shadows and the storm and Jenkins and the dark shapes in the distance.

“Boxer!” he cried. “Boxer!”

He felt his way down one of the passageways to the mess and then to the kitchen but still – no signs of life or even bodies or even that anyone had even recently been here. How long was I out? he thought but he knew it couldn’t have been so very long because the ship was still afloat and he was still alive. But there was life in the mess – there were the chickens in the cage back in the kitchen. How many times had Jenkins stared at these chickens and thought of splitting one open for himself and depriving the officers of their omelets and grill himself the whole thing over an open fire!

It was the first time since the beginning of the squall that he thought of home.

Then, he was racing back through the passageway, back through the rows of cots and over to the ladder. A sudden drop laid him on his back, right on a roll of parchment and a few broken pens, but he was back on his feet in a heartbeat and grasping onto the rungs of the ladder.

He was already incapable of thinking that this couldn’t be happening.

They had taught you how to climb the ladder during a storm, but they also said you’d only really learn how to do it after you’ve taken a bad fall and it was just like that now as Jenkins climbed to the deck. He went up steady and firm and trembling.

The deck looked more expansive than ever, and Jenkins couldn’t make out any of the boundaries. The wooden strips of the decks dissolved into the mist and the gloom which in turn melted into the massive hurtling arch of the low sky. Here the shards of glass and personal objects and walls didn’t drown out the storm and it was hard on Jenkins’ sharpened senses and each impact of the waves seemed so loud that it had to be the last one but it wasn’t.

There was only one other place to look but Jenkins’ heart went cold and small and seized up with a strange amount of friction. But there shouldn’t be any regrets, he told himself, and I shouldn’t have to go under, I have done what I should have done. I could just stay up top until the end.

His fingers were blurred to his vision and light to the touch and as he gripped a piece of rope a quick snap in his back that tore through the rain reminded him of the fall he had taken but it didn’t matter because he didn’t have to worry what it would feel like tomorrow. And he was surprised when he thought about the shadows and about engineering, for he discovered he was still capable of feeling terror. If this is it, he thought, I shouldn’t feel afraid – it should be peace – so what does that mean?

His skin began to crawl at its edges and his heart held itself at an inhuman rate, glancing off organs and swelling the blood in his face but all the time shouting at him, commanding him, “Not now! It’s not going to end now! You won’t fail me!” and he thought of one word: engineering. He knew he could really go down where he wanted least in the world to go because he had managed to convince himself that he had to do it. Here another thought intruded, one that had been with him earlier but only now seemed to strike him as a reality – he could also throw himself over the railing. He could put out the race of his brain and the burn of his heart and the ache of his temples from the fall and the absurd commands of his heart, and he could put himself over the side and not worry about savings or earnings or his long-term health or what he should have said to Rosy four years before.

To the absurd commands of his heart – the sky beat down, rain, fog, waves, and falls, and there would be no guilt in the descent. And it wasn’t the actual pain of the jump that made him afraid to do it.

But he convinced himself that he had to go on, and his heart jumped, shoring strength. He had to check engineering. “Go now,” it told him and he obeyed.

It was a short jog down to an external ladder off the rear of the ship, a ladder you weren’t supposed to climb in any kind of rough sea let alone in the curling abyss of a captain-less ship. It led down to a room with windows, but it was hard for Jenkins to think about it any further. The mystery was down there, he knew, and his last instincts were telling him to find some answers to everything. Bodies, he thought, but that still didn’t seem possible because there was no direct connections between the mess and the cots to the engineering room. The bodies were there, nonetheless. But it was hard for Jenkins to think about it any further. And he could only think of the captain’s eyes as he had turn to go under the ship.

He made his way again on his hands and knees across the lurching, slick wood and found a rope that was secured to the aft prow and this allowed him to move faster with his eyes closed and his left hand gingerly reaching ahead for the boards.

He reached the wood and sat up slowly, holding onto the top rung of the aft ladder with everything he had left in him and his right entwined in the rope he had used to pull himself over. A sudden wave shot him up in the air, and he felt the oncoming of indefinite free-fall. And, while his loose leg flailed through the wind, he held tight.

“And I could let go – I could let go,” he thought.

“Captain!” he yelled down.

The view behind the ship held him in trance once he was on the ladder: the thick, sloshing, oily waves with thick heads of foam slapping the ship and hurling out of the darkness: the sudden shock when what seemed to be rapidly rolling fog materialized into a jet of hissing water: the sheets of rain that came down hard and from all different sides and impossibly melted into the waves as if they had never been; and the slimy, crashing darkness all above and all below: and knowing that there was so much so close beneath the water’s surface.

And do, down the ladder.

Every step he took he assumed would be his last. - Any second. Any second and I’ll be rolling, dark matter. I’ll be every different direction, I’ll be swift movement and dark stuff under the waves. But he was still on the ladder after each step.
Halfway down a sudden gust caught hold of him and his left hand slipped, but his right was there.
“And yet, it would be so easy.”

He pried himself into the engineering room with such a rapid move he had forgot about his fear. He made an exhausted, cautious swing with his legs and then lay panting on his stomach, feeling closer to the water than ever, almost part of the ship, and it took him some time to look up at the room because he kept expecting something to happen to him besides the jostles of the storm but nothing did. When he did look up around the room, the water in his left ear suddenly unclogged, pulling a warm sensation through his body, and he saw that this room was empty as well.
There were no bodies.

And everything started to twist together – the hull, the deck, the wood and the iron, the bridge to the wheelhouse and the ship finally started to skip haphazardly across the waves. The ship had taken on too much water and was no longer riding the waves – the ship would be going down or apart very soon. But that wasn’t what Jenkins was waiting for to happen.

The room twirled in darkness, and its gross emptiness even more so than in the crew’s quarters sharpened Jenkins’ senses.

The smell was unsea-like, it was salty and moist but dry and earthen, too. The battle of the wood and water seemed distant from here, like looking down onto a battle from a picnic on a hill. Jenkins’ heart sucked and trembled and expanded, and he knew that it would come for him here.

The snapping sound crashed from the darkness behind the boat and locked Jenkins’ eyes shut. It was followed a second time – a taught cable breaking in your face. It was followed a third time – a kick in your jaw.

And he could feel the monstrous presence, the shape that had always been watching him just out of his own view and had waited patiently for him because it had had time. Had he just discovered what the captain had known on the deck? Had it passed, this sudden understanding that had only now reached him, tacitly between the others above?

He tried to remember what he had seen in the captain’s eyes.

There was nothing but him and the sea and his fear, nothing but his dying pink body and the shredding black commotion beyond the wood paneling. And it was calling to him, the hungry, threatening shape. It promised oblivious if you would just do what it commanded and beyond the second of terrible pain from body in storm was the promise of white light and silences. Or else, he knew, you just had the fever of waiting for it to come to you.

It was here that Jenkins’ heart settled. A cool liquid stream of tingling numbness spread out through his blood in every direction and then back again. He was unaware of any contact between his back and the floor, or his hands on the wood, and there was just a great, deafening space above him, and he knew that his heart had given up like prey in the grasp of a predator and his eyes had probably gone calm.

Jump, the snap and the darkness commanded. Jump off the boat like all the rest.

His body felt like to first time you drank alcohol and it would be so easy now.

“No,” he said out loud, “no snuffing out and no silence in waves – just because you’ve given up. Just because you’ve decided I can jump.”

“I’m still here – and I’ll wait – for it,” he said again to his heart and the words echoed through the dull earthen room, his back flat against the wood and his fingers holding his stinging eyes open.

feels like fall... the leaves stink straight up through heaven...

It's a fake sky

Those rags above the rooftops


Gray spits

Of hollowed tickling brain


Menacing

In its attention

On you

what you should have said
is so easy now!
and ready on the tip
of your brain!

it hurts when you think
against your will!
of all that could have
cleansed the now!

Soporiferous dreams

put me in my place

of waning the long

dawn Home


I’ll stack all these bricks

just as they should

And cry at What I

have to forget


When it slips your hand

there’s a vague attention

fixed on the Back

of the Ghost


and it only leaves you

at the moment of Wake

as the headache

pulls you to Day

I only have one Handle

It's Made of bits of clay

It sticks right Out

Between my Lips

Daring the Girls to Play!

Moscow: 22 September: 7pm MST: Eurasia: Russian Federation

"I have seen / wonderful things..."

You're always alone

In moments of change

Even if your ears sense voice


And you're always numb

Tallying what you've lost

And feeling your skin anew

god i hate the sunrise

when you aren't here

god it's all just

sickening hope

the light off the

offwhite ceiling

and all my

measured breathing

the room

is still heavy

of you


it senses

every bone

I dare

bring inside



your eyes

still catch

unwary mirrors



cursing

at the space

that you

left behind

end of days -

i can feel its pace

hasten my breath -



rain on the brink

of a clear cold sky

promising touch

to your pain -

and - desire is - strong -

- when - variants are few -

time is just a word, you know

and dates, even worse

when they approach, the words

rubs out the dark fictions,

that hold you before the fall

summer keeps us cold
in the promise of tanned skins
and all then open skies
of the world and more and more

the sounds of the water
streaming on glass, and bleach of
the reddening sun
finds more ways of promise

until winter hold our breath

skij yesh on... losing strength.... in blog posting...

for some reason safari keeps crashing on blogger.

anyone know why?

so i have to load up firefox any time i want to post.

i'll get more on it, friends.

for one, i'll get some more tallinn photos up.

just turned down a job to be an international silicon buyer - i think i'm the better for turning it down.

though i am about to start work on translation griboedov's WOE FROM WIT {gore ot uma}


more soon....

The city awakes
oil spat
sleepy eyed
corn crusted at the edges
with its thumbs around your balls
night was fields: night was cool water
night washed all of the heady scum in
the thorn-water of neon forgetting
yes, that was when
you could breathe!
the city does not allow
the same around the streetlights
once you can see from all sides
learn to walk with that grip, lad,
and keep the smells to yourself.

just returned from tallinn... in case you've been checking the site.... ha ha ha...

scraping to pieces the past left behind
and sticking through memory
the way it all should have been

nerves are what stack up

against the greyest blacks

skin is that which hold the tone

of all this little waiting

amazing... moscow.... just when i was losing faith....

Inglish indeed!

always nice to drag a poem up from long ago, that makes you wince a little when you read it over...

the girl you love is with another, tonight

the stars will choke out your little heart, tonight

and the morning, ready to light up your ceiling, tonight

it hurts to be so genuine and so ridiculous, tonight

and the keys tap and tap and tap, tonight

this one goes out to alai

....was in my gym today and they were doing some kind of aerobics on the second floor.... they had their special music going....russians, like continental europeans - who they both dread and desire to become one day - love the techno..... and on came a techno trash version of "EYE OF THE TIGER".....and it reminded me at first of good ole wesleyan lifting days...... in free-wook before some glorious steaming and 50 free.....and I was under the bench, and I got all pumped up....like when I was in high school and I was lifting for football and the 12th graders stood around yelling "DO IT DO IT"...... and you feel the burning in your chest.... AND THE BAR CAME DOWN......but then I realized it was some kind of EYE OF THE TIGER EuRO REMIX ..... with a techno beat under it.... and that great "DUH, DUH DAH DUH, DAH DUh Duuuh" bass line was replaced by slick synthetic drumming..... it was so awful I almost failed my 10 rep of 140lbs....and almost sent my body sailing through the 8th story window with the stereo......but I ended up lifting in peace...a stronger but less naive man....

Walk Home: A Photo Essay: June 6, 2006: Moscow

The Beginning of the walk: A Tree, A Footpath, A Lamp, A Sign






The City Spreads Streets and Possible Endings






A grating to a patio or to an arch, the red restoran sign begins to explode into white light






Could be a crowd: the white light and the darkness around keeps it in confusion





Blues and reds






Lone figure pauses to contemplate the melting street scene, in textured pants






Collapsing






Across a Street, Lined With Parked Cars and Neon in The Distance






the sidewalk tries to carry you in its upward swells of light, careful with your feet






Sign wavers as cool blue electricity tries to swallow its elusive bulk






Stabs of Electricity, the way they swing






Ghost dvor tries to maintain its shape






Something leans from shadow, Hungry for the verticals