man, watch, and gun.

man, watch, and gun.

a deaf man presses his cold palm

against the shining lunar silver

of  a watch, chain coiled around

his left index finger. bullets hit

the wall in rapid procession.

first the poet falls and then

the jewish woman with gray eyes.

 

nothing is sacred beneath stalin’s

chin ,and the rivers are dammed

with legs and elbows. brown shoes,

beige jackets, and the uniformity

of petrified faces before the firing rounds.

 

he wonders what dostoevsky felt right before

the czar’s reprieve arrived and his hands shook

in awe of the inevitable. he wonders if

the writer was a window into himself,

if he could see his future, a bucket of cool water

poured into the sludge of street gutter.,

 

daylight bouncing off tinctured glass,

dreams burning with the fiery

resonance of unwritten poems.

across the iron curtain, 1971

across the iron curtain, 1971

we were always reaching

for something beyond ourselves,

and numb as i was,

i didn’t need touch to know

that sense is suffering.

watching you

at your stand,  hulking wares from back east

trying to make six marks stretch

a fortnight.

from the window

i wondered if you ever noticed

me waving, my palm pressed

against the cold glass, appraising

your wind-tossed hair, sweet

as the strings of a wind-chime.

i could never tell you

how gorgeous you looked in gray,

how i longed to rush from my door

and caress you in your rain-drenched dress,

your shoulders always hunched in a subdued

posture. i could never tell you

that you roared with the inner freedom

of a flame at a policeman’s door.

i could never tell you,

because you never happened.

one day you rounded the corner

and kept walking,

and kept walking away.