poem by nekrasov

pines

and over the pines
starnes

and birches

and behind the birches
stirches

Oh Matt Tracey, that Demon Forever

this is a poem by vsevolod nekrasov

translated by me and Ainsley

sea
what sea

you can say of the sea you can say

a whole sea of sea

a full sea of sea

of the sea you can say

a real sea
a real sea

really
a sea
a sea
a sea

sea sea sea sea

real real

level

probably you can
even
talk about it like this

rather, really,
probably
you can even
see it this way

only very
rarely

another one by nekrasov

Well

kind of, sort of

thank God

a lea

alongside the water

and the white heads of Vologda

kind of like

there there they are

you

white heads of Vologda

head

in the water

head

in the sky

foot in shit

a run-in where run-ins ran long
or were run from runs an arduous course
on a brief runway

***

the wigwam wove of the winner's hair
is only a domed wig, no home

The guys in the black coats, and the ones in
white coats, and the ones in gray jumpsuits
arrived with clipboards and
hardhats (trailing the brown blazers with
clip-on briefcases and soft hats)

and guess what, they diminished
the damage assessment, pulled back the rescue/
containment efforts on their gargantuan spools,
generally repackaged the whole thing, ingeniously
effecting the dimunition with minimal resources--
just the words around the words, fused effortlessly to
new symbols, etched in the air like wire halos

Then the men in the white jumpsuits
grew up from under the halos, radiating
delicious virtue, oh yes, oh yum, here they
are, here they come, and here comes
ice cream!!!

Poem to God

Don't just ring me up, my hands
are a mound of glittering
entrails, lemon leaf

Leman, if you find me out,
I'll punch every bird out your
every branch, heaven

Me and Matt Tracey, Ditch Traction

we were goofing around last night and ditched this

b: i squeeze all the sunspots

between the shadowfingers

of ravensweed thinking of you

m: of stalks, i trust their fringes

a binge of cornhol for this pit

stomaching away from you sweet

the 'chine i ride, nearing the grapehol

unto slopes and squirrels.

and there is a vine,

and is there an experimental fruit hiding with us

b: how do you map the trail?

do you follow footpaths or the smell of entrails?

m: we stepped over tooths

some hush and tear'd,

maps over eyes and cans on ears

b: what do you do when the hunter

harkens near with his red rattle?

I'm rustling with fear, my follicles thrust

helpless up like antennae entreating beetle

m: our embrace was a hiding place,

the stone in the grape made us opaque.

the hunter interloping let us be translucent

b: our kiss sent us shimmering wet

in the mushroom gills with the thrill of the guillotine,

while some ravens made slits in the silence, we wouldn't slip

m: a slip, a hose hiccuping gasoline

like the spirit of a horse dead in the creek, livening

b: neighing, "skip this page, choose an adventure

that doesn't lurch you in the grippe ditch"

m: another repair- cylinders, steam,

and tar on the thoroughfare--

the grip of wishful thoughts

tear us and dump us in ashy sunspots

b: in granite, we run our bare feet

on ragged, waiting for our wishes

to be squeezed out on the steel

m: I recall getting held in the palm of a ditch,

a threatening flashlight brought to whimper

by my own sleepy drunk,

as here we cradle in this stranger's box

b: where is threat? it trickles out of a hose

like a gardener snake in weak light.

where is regret? at the feet of the interloper,

the inferior sea crowned by three in a bathtub, hahaha

fire fire fire

I hope my fire isn't out. Here's a bird poem about birds.



Lurid in blue, but following suit of
some suitor who glued me to
the plumes

of a suitor who vocalized low
in a harsh vibrato, who

was only blue bird of paradise blue.

'Bird of paradise' is 'bird of god' crudely lyricized,
far-flung family named by a dumb lover pulling a color:

Sur taxonomy cum hybrid bride blue,
tautadelusion cum azure mantra, blue

Vishna hung in the Virgin Mary's robes blue,
lewd blue, vulgar but true, only


NADIA replies:

here is monsieur crepuscule, dumb plover

elegant as a crane with his reedy legs

and his blue wings tucked back, perfect

conduct and under neat the lapsed

egg, ovoid missing cluster of others

faint blue to blend in with some bird's

idea of subtlety, eternity, or horizonless

water, every waterbird's cool wish

when dusk dims the distinction

between water, wind, water, and

gusting air, the fat sails, or in doldrums

the gut strings, plucked.

dumb lover, some august plover,

luridly drowned in the ding-donging deep.

To Nadia, Apple Continued

I throw the apple at you, and if you are willing to love me, take it and share your girlhood with me; but if your thoughts are what I pray they are not, even then take it, and consider how short-lived is beauty.

—Plato, Epigram VII^[21]

Dar Nopple,

Here is my face: I am
the apple's black drama, I am the
bird's red digestion.

I cut my teeth on her ovary,
ground up the seed coat,
coated my tongue in bitter
cotyledon, drowning a promise
in stagnancy.

Here is my grimace: strung up
in petrified strands on a
dead tree.

Drink to me,
you, in the lion cage,

hot from holding the
rubber hose long

under the zoo sun--
same as the jungle

one. Drink it
to me.

Poem I Wrote For Matt Tracey, Nadia's Response

Dear Matt,
I am sitting on an apple.
Here is my face: red and wet.

In a tree petrified over a swamp
There are twenty-three buzzards, ripe,

And only rare droppings alongside
Rare rain prove them alive.

A gun is going off, Matt.
A chainsaw is going at it.
Unwilling insects are droning--
Louder, I shatter
An apple.



NADIA:



dear bel,

I knew that apple back
when he was a blossom,
spreading his sordid pollen-
nodding anthers, filament, node, and bolus,
while carpels sighed open, each
seed still dank white, as arsenic or lime,
the dicotyledon alchemy not to occur
'til eight full months from the blossom's drop.

yet the buzzard's black crop crammed
and stinking: this bird's digestion has
no role to play in apple's red drama.
the buzzard's the curtains, all twenty-three
of them, falling sequentially over the stage's
thick soils, where beetles crab and grub,
and saplings mewl for phosphate, nitrogen,
pneuma, sawdust, bones, and oil.

now i have to fight nadia to the death. but i don't want her to die.

the final crumb of x

clear-throated, I sing in
a see-through coat
some garbageman filled my pockets with pulses
now they are fish in a bowl

when I biked through the rain
in my see-through coat
blindness coated my eyes
my legs got soaked, but my torso
remained invisible and warm

slicking over the road the translucent thought of a ghost
above a dark sea under the wet black
baby fist, like like the roof
of your mouth, David Sherman

David,
I saw pods of sophomores in gold slacking through a green gym period
I saw three plastic skulls gritting teeth deep over a hedge
and it isn't even October,

the month of the top half of your body, or
November, the month of you from the waist down

and after I saw through the sun came out so
I started to bake
And I baked and I baked
And I sweat butter
And I sneezed salt

He came rough in the door
between summer and winter
panting like a runaway

a hole cutaway in his pants
revealing a green pear wreathed
in dead leaves

if you said "Hey Pops,
it's unbecoming being so dewed-up
a boy of your age,"

He would say "Ha-ha, once
I've come I can't unbecome, ha"
Ha ha

Poetry is a Secret

Click to read this poem by Ilya Bernstein

Christopher Smart

from Jubilate Agno. I will never stop loving this.

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry. For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him. For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way. For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness. For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer. For he rolls upon prank to work it in. For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself. For this he performs in ten degrees. For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean. For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there. For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended. For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood. For fifthly he washes himself. For sixthly he rolls upon wash. For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat. For eighthly he rubs himself against a post. For ninthly he looks up for his instructions. For tenthly he goes in quest of food. For having consider'd God and himself he will consider his neighbour. For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness. For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance. For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying. For when his day's work is done his business more properly begins. For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the adversary. For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes. For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life. For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him. For he is of the tribe of Tiger. For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger. For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses. For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation. For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he's a good Cat. For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon. For every house is incomplete without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit. For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt. For every family had one cat at least in the bag. For the English Cats are the best in Europe. For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped. For the dexterity of his defence is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly. For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature. For he is tenacious of his point. For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery. For he knows that God is his Saviour. For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest. For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion. For he is of the Lord's poor and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually--Poor Jeoffry! poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat. For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better. For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat. For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in music. For he is docile and can learn certain things. For he can set up with gravity which is patience upon approbation. For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment. For he can jump over a stick which is patience upon proof positive. For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command. For he can jump from an eminence into his master's bosom. For he can catch the cork and toss it again. For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser. For the former is afraid of detection. For the latter refuses the charge. For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business. For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly. For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services. For he killed the Ichneumon-rat very pernicious by land. For his ears are so acute that they sting again. For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention. For by stroking of him I have found out electricity. For I perceived God's light about him both wax and fire. For the Electrical fire is the spiritual substance, which God sends from heaven to sustain the bodies both of man and beast. For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements. For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer. For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped. For he can tread to all the measures upon the music. For he can swim for life. For he can creep.

Bleeding fleshes ground up and made a hard stick

To chew slow in cold times

When otherwise everywhere is ice rock

The lambs brain and feet and heart smashed

With salt into its thinned out intestine

So teeth scrape its fey layers of fat

What’s left of the sheep inside sheep

Petrified meat off a long-buried bone clumsy in shape of a bone

Like old hands would have pressed a bone flute

Passed from the summer

When sausage meat grew like bee song on each grass head in every meadow.

This Song, You, Me, The Moon

Where is someone I can moon

I mean love to this song?

I would slowly sink down my pants

I mean, into your arms

Into the moonlight, I mean

This song, you, me, and the moon

Old lady, dog, baby

I started wailing along to the song

Like an old lady baby dog

I was a baby, she was a dog,

she was an old lady

she was a balding white mutt

and she had a silver white bob

like her dog's ears

when both of them died within days of each other,

I drew their portraits and on both I wrote "It's not fair!"

Nadia:

Daffodils

Every sedentary bloom
Wishes it could tell you
"Go right ahead"

Paintbrushes softening in saltwater
make softer lines
on dampening pages

The daffodil can't walk
Across the room
To tell you so


Bela:

Vernal movements plume fingers first through a darkness

Like daffodils bloom on a polar bear's carcass

The one we wrote line-by-line-ish

Nadia and I:


And the froth melted into an ebullient bullion awash on August's curled golden skin

Buttercup-fed butter, the pollen-flavor of burning which bees refuse to share

In their waxen lairs, torturing the flickering fire out of the firefly they conspire

To condition into submission with slow belly-strokes.

Thoracic ducts releasing a seizure of brown rivulets that are like ant's heads without the antlers.
Autumn's dead dancers stumble elsewhere, nearby. Chemical receptors sing out their premonitions:

The leaves will shake
The leaves will shake

August's skin, shaggy, shred like a hive, throws light off in ambery body bags

April 2, 2010

Bela:

We sat scattered like saws after
The forest fire
Beards like white plumes of ash wandered through us trailing gnomes
Of a stream broke over granite of cold metal buckets
A tinny clink and a ring betrothed us to eachother's earth

Nadia:

A delicate forest
can have no pines

conifers are the confidence
of the woodland, they never shy
from shaking their needles
hazardous near eyes

eyes can be harmed
and so shrink
towards woods interrupted
by meadows
to harmless old logs,
shelved with fungus
to trees that dapple shade
deciduous
and in the winter
provide no huddle
provide no shelter
provide no
provisions

Marine Mammal: Nadia, Marianne Moore, Bela

Marine Mammal

Nadia:

There is passage in 20,000 leagues under the sea, where captain nemo serves the narrator cheese made from whale’s milk

Since then, I have hungered for it, dreamed of it, I imagine it tastes like little boneless white sardines, but milder, or like drinking soft sea moss

Cheese made from rat’s milk

Mouse legs are said to taste like licorice (or anise) when roasted

The mongols drank mare’s milk and mare’s blood, and distilled the two into a liqueur which made them fierce before a battle

They rode their horses with pieces of raw meat tucked under the saddle, to tenderize them

They never bathed

They were epicures

But still, imagine, Bela, suckling at a whale’s teat while the huge mass of the whale budges gently around you

Marianne Moore:

Minute marine steam dredges with wide mouths/ their base of operations designated by the sun/ mouths shut but living every one/ their jaws swung out and made voracious in the thin/ translucent ferment of the sea as it comes in

Bela:

Whales mother mollusks with their warm pillows of dung

They are the willows of the sea, still blowing clouds

Shields for sharp rays and sting rays

They intimidate

Thought and sky thought itself,

To be a mollusk is to honor whale mothers.


Nadia:

marine mammal creates, retains

its own heat, then perpetrates

one massive parturition,

calving among krill, unwatched

what hungers were hatched

at whale’s gorgeous teat

Bela:

Unspeaking, Marine mammals moo as they smoulder

In time crusting them in broad beating-heart tumors

Some tumors are bulgeous and some long and lean

Some plaints cannot steam through the grills of baleens

Nadia!:

No fish eye glimmers in the unlit deep

No scales shimmer, no flames of coral burn

Along the colorless perimeter

Where arthropods feast on mammalian bones.

Huge eyeless worms appreciate neither

Marrow-filled corridors nor flesh clinging

Still in ribbons to spectacular bones.

Now the tender maternal whale breast makes

New forms of food, bare materials for growth

Of strange infants, starving in repulsive depths.

Everybody is a love

with the clapping of her hoove

with the rapping of her moothe

and the apple of her smooth

slide to finish!

Win! Win! Win!

Get her in!

Get her in!

Two Of the Clone Ones

She’s the tits, I’m the teeth

We got teeth, we got tits

When I spit, when she spits

In turn, brushing our teeth

She thinks of me, I of her when we spit

Who goes first and who waits and listens to it?

2.

Sometimes the old life encroaches

She grows my old athlete’s foot on her toes

But I’d never give up my new feet for her

Nadia Bela End of July

Nadia is helping Nadia is healing Nadia is writing well

Nadia:

the sea declines
its faultless pergola extends
over all the soft-bodied and the bony
and those clenched within paired shells
and those scuttling, crabbed, from one similar rock
to another

The sea now darker than the sky and now lighter
and today, while the day was running down, a muskrat
lurched from the weave of leaves and then turned tail
and entered the dark interior of the shrubbery

the sea reclines
its rubbery pergola dubs
the critters with taxonomic orders
makes of them all representatives of florid phenotypes,
budding species in a branch without managers

this is no place for solemnities or meager measures meant
to indemnify the longueurs of a difficult book against
unintelligibility. this is no time to place bets, to file down
snagging edges of regrets. arrest the long-lived filaments
before they exhaust the glow that’s in them. fill the lucid space with dangerous
vapors and watch it illuminate with half the expenditure. when that
globe shatters, watch it. when that globe, watch out.

the sea clowns and totters where shore
and birds meet, filament lining the pond, pond
smocked with brick-colored algae, stippled with swans,
its rim at the brink and spilling over among the vertical
stems, the reeds silent and limp as the swans.


Bela:

the sea declines

its faultless and approximate rhymes extend

over all soft-bodied and bony nouns, horned

and clenched over shell pairs, oyster flesh, and scuttling crabs

an undulating tongue of meat
The sea now darker and the sky now barking

and today, while day was running down the street, a muskrat

rose up in the opposite direction, lurching from the weave of leaves

and then turned tail into the shadows of the aqua-solar shrubbery

the sea inclines

its rubbery pagoda dubs

the critters orderlies,

makes all of them representatives of Florid Phenotypes,

budding employees at a branch that's barely managed

This is no place for solemn ties or meager measurement meant
to indemnify the longueurs of a business suit against unintelligibility.
this is no time, replace your bets, file down the snagging edges of regrets, or let them sag out of their files. Amass the longing filaments
And let their glow exhaust you with their long lives. Fill the luminescent
Spaces with dangerous smells and watch yourself expire with half of the
expenditure. When that lobe shatters, watch it. With that lobe watching

The Sea Clowns and Otters meet birds
At The Shore, filament lining their bond, the bar
smocked and lined with algae bricks, stippled with snaggle shells
and spilling over on the vertical
wine glass stems and beer, a pond silent and dim


NADIA:

let them sag out of their flies
then cough until it's clear you're barking
and bark until hair sprouts on your shanks
and a brand new gland seeps scented oils for social
ends; this gland managed by an obtruding lobe
that coils beneath your thinking brain

let them lobe, until lobbing, the loaf splits and shows
its lily-white phalanges: this is the salt passage, twelve
lumens bright and barking on the table, like a sucked
lozenge. over there, twelve acres decked with white pine,
stunted, and some trees, roused and umber, stacked
with small fruits that only here are called plums, less sweet
than elsewhere and mealy, a treat for sucking deer, a passable jam.

NADIA! NADIA! NADIA!

thin sausages, fingers and fungers,
plumb sausages like her thingers, thrumbling gusters

blowsies thin kisses thinks finger tips, bumbers and clumb bumbers

heavy hand cummers, but drunk dumber, rummer and rimmer

think fingers and cumber’s crumbs littering drummers
blowsie thin cymbal dust, brummer

some summer heave sigher, fake slumber in heavy blowsie gust bang on the gut gutter

mud water plumbs the dumb gutter to south, gagging gutters mouth gutters, meat finger fungers, plump sausages, plumber, plump plumbers