Latin Parataxis
1.
The day the dictator
was sentenced
to death
I noticed a lot of musicians in the street
they weren’t out because of the sentence
the musicians in this country are typically apolitical
I’m sure most of them didn’t know about the sentence
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them didn’t even know about the trial
our dictator was captured by another country when he was visiting
his mother
nobody really complained
it was bound to happen
this morning as I walked through the cement square of my urban village
I felt a little sad for our dictator
sure he’d made a travesty of television,
persecuted doctors, writers, thieves, clerics, etc.
but death by hanging?
is a hanging supposed to make us feel better?
I am sure there are those who oppose it
I am sure there are those who praise it
I for one think it’s a little excessive
but only a little
I must meet Codford and finish the piece
I have other things on my mind
maintaining the formal categories of the language
in it
while keeping true to the process
trying to balance the extrinsic and intrinsic qualities of the thing
a double helix of honky tonk blues and Handel
I take a cigarette out of my pocket
and find:
lately I’ve been feeling a stranger in my own mind
walking here and there
up to an attic with growing levels
ladders
I open a box
I funny picture of a dictator in his underwear
2.
I feel my remember God language children
green
green
green
I am the happy genius of my contented universe
The curious child at your door with a bag full of insects
You know that guy over there, yeah, that’s me too
when you crawled into my bed
gene asked me to take you out, and close the door
so I picked you up, recited some Pushkin, played a song on the guitar
when I got back into bed
gene was asleep
I dreamed of a manatee on the beach
a little suspended off the ground like in Ben’s paintings
it’s eating comfort food, covered by a net
I’d like to cut it out
but I’m afraid of slicing her skin
3.
человек с пивом
мальчик с мороженом
обсуждают женщину
-я тебе одолжил 200 р.
(ты мне одарила поцелуй –по щеке.
пошел пешком дамой долго шел.
простудился. подслушивал.)
-ты плохой, но любимой.
-я все понимаю.
я уранил корзинку с грибами.
-ну и что?
уранил так уранил.
они не кому особенно не нужны.
-THE QUESTION OF LIFE AFTER DEATH
HAS INTERESTING… ALTHOUGH
MOST PEOPLE SEEM TO CONSIDER THIS A
QUESTION OF WHETHER DEATH EXISTS.
WHEREAS I HAVE ALWAYS THOUGHT
THIS A QUESTION OF LIFE. THAT IS
DOES LIFE EXIST? ALSO, THIS QUESTION
MAKES ME THINK OF HOW WAR
SELECTS FOR CERTAIN GENES
AND GENRES. HOW DID WWII
SELECT FOR PARTICULAR
ALELLES?
4.
my death awaits me in
dancing his skinny hips in your direction
he grabs a martini, nods to the man in the white suit
you’re turning thirty-thirty-three
spinning spinning spinning
creating ice age molecules
a library of paleontology
5.
the bad thing about the English department
is that
it doesn’t reward failure
in all fields?
at least in science
failure is seen as an important
piece of the puzzle.
6.
where is the poetry?
where did it go?
do you know any poets?
I certainly don’t.
the universal grammar though
has an old career
you needn’t fear
the language instinct
the maternal bee string
driving the piano up the hill
dropping it down the stairs
burning your feet on the hot pavement
ringingringingringing
Dave please don’t say that
your lover’s doorbell
hell she might not
not be your prince
6.
Dvorak my queen
what signals are you radiating?
who has picked them up?
how many friends do you have?
what women do you have beneath your tongue?
I am a rather lonely rabbit
I find my situations lacking
my images do not comfort me
at first I was flattered
I am still curious
but who knew that curiosity
like beauty
is an attribute?
or that the old poets listend to
such terrible music?
7.
the dictator shakes his fists
the judge faces another lonely night
starring at the TV screen
watching himself in the dark
his kids play German techno in the other room
he is in love with his daughter’s best friend
his wife is on her second affair
he hasn’t had an orgasm in three months
his friends say he is an effigy of virtue
pan-paniscus: shoa-ecology
pan-paniscus
as always you are the last or first to know
the law of the excluded middle child
I saw this almost phenomenologically
I listen to my friend
it smells like pasta he says
it doesn’t smell like tuna
it’s not stupid
I like tuna
if people don’t laugh at my poetry there is something wrong with them
or me
it’s always a little bit of both
never this or that
like porn
what kind of laughter do I want
like what kind of love do I want
isn’t it odd that most homosexual men are also pedophiles
our country dressed in homosexuals
I really like children
do you like homosexuals
I don’t mean like to tolerate
or appreciate
or respect
or whatever
but do you lovvve homosexuals in the same way you love americanos
or americans
or
is your relationship as complex and as interesting
as when my roommate was home and I didn’t know he was home
so when I… and he walked out of his room… I jumped
in the shower I oftentimes study
plato’s republic in my mind
I sing in greek then latin then german
I sing the national anthem of luxemburg
I I I I
it’s all about me isn’t it
well what about you
what about you and me
what about us
we together us together we together break
the wives of the world have foiled the swastika cookie cutters
remember we re-memeber remember
forget the time the phone rang
and you a childish paladin running with your horse head full of sushi
catching the tin drum by the little screaming brat’s pabst
shoa-ecology
10
100
100,000,000,000,000,000,000
when you get lots of people into the same place the thing (at its best)
engineering is always the same
the better it is the more it is the same thing
the organizing principles
what it looks like after the organizing
you have no friends just mates
just in it together
in line
in many respects
lots of things
fucked up
but we don’t boycott mom
for fucking up by buying us crayons instead of a tank
or
where was it
or my friend because he fucked my girlfriend
sorry I mean our friend
my girlfriend
our girlfriend
or my girlfriend’s girlfriend
second comings
and one day
fuel air bombs
fucking up is what good ecosystems do best
they do it in abandon
don’t abandon the bonobo
if it eats too many echidnas
rips them limb from probiscus
with its teeth
with its culture
with its tools
don’t abandon the little nazi in your son’s video game
it’s like puberty
don’t abandon puberty
or prepubescence
or rape
or jabbing wires through the mammilian body
it’s about all of us sea cows
don’t toss billy into the toilet
after you’ve carried him around
under your arm for over 72 hours
when he is six he will fill his foster dad’s
beer cooler with night crawlers
and we’ll all have a good chuckle
like TV audiences
the message being the massage
the massage is the message
you don’t know a goddamn thing
but you don’t need too
if you can enjoy a massage
about what you are talking about
your mother
who is the castrated shell of her father
who was a fat golden retriever who smoked cigars and stank of scotch
who was the effigy of a sea lion or was a manatee
made of $20 bills
the waiter being the waiter
the man who waits
at the oxygen bar looking for air
tired after a long day at the plasma clinic
living off and after and before
pre-Stroika in the bag
living off catholic boloney sandwiches
Contemporary Analytic Philosophy in 5 Acts
I would like to ban the words: machine, fountain, and snow
metallic drinking fountain
truth has an accent
like gook-jews
midget-luchador
redneck-niggers
and some machines drop radios made of microwave parts
lovingly
metallic water
tumbling from a communal bathhouse
bassquiet stands up
Gregor Gregorovich (a favorite character of: 0 users)
pours the last of the gin over the computer
-that fucking does it, he says, and suddently cries, I’m jewish! I can’t
feel my eyes!
-come on you two, says Yassen Gregorovich.
-what are you, the gestapo?
-come on fellas.
-jeez just let us finish our drinks.
-you’re finished; lets go.
-look, says bassquiet, it’s peter.
-what’s it doing up there? asks Gregor Gregorovich.
-maybe he has something to say about a memoir, says bassquiet,
and leaves through the back door.
(Peter, dribbling briskly into position in front of his goal, squaring up to encompass his own destruction.)
When I missed your flight
sitting in a new way
-don’t shoot, cries Gregor Gregorovich.
-don’t jump, says Yassen Gregorovich.
-give him air, says the violinist in bar light.
(peter continues, a transcription without notes.)
not anything about love or poetry or st.
or hymenoptera models
of roots and branches
standing in oppisition to themselves
-It’s Sibelius’ Violin Concerto in D minor, says the violinist.
(peter sways and takes a drink of water.)
the airport smells like an old couch
the old woman asks you to watch her bag
I think about the impact this act will have on the
the female asks the male
sit on the floor
she puts her head in his lap
he watches the escalator
meat being moved into its places
-I can’t stand it, cries Gregor Gregorovich.
-Oh, the horror, the horror, says Yassen Gregorovich.
-The horror, the horror, repeats the violinist.
(peter continues)
I am hiding
in the imagined thoughts of others
in the fat woman’s conversation with her bags about security
the old woman in the bathroom
siting on the toilet
the ghost of my death
the light of my hour
(peter puts a hand to his brow and falls to the floor)
a gathering crowd:
-there are of course limits
we wait peacefully
like something from a haiku
just like the plane was never invented, mummbles peter coming
tWo…
-somebody give him a bank card, says the violinist.
when I left
when I was scheduled to leave
-take the mean and multiply it by the square root of (t)1, suggests
Gregor Gregorovich.
-are the people on the converyer belt transplanted into sausages?
asks Yassen Gregorovich.
packed into planes
packed into planes
taken back to
fed to my grandmother’s dictator
cluching his nappies
hemorraging –bleeding from the ass
asleep
dreaming of a yellow meadow from a movie
(peter gets up, wobbly on his feet. Mandy Potemkin walks through
the small doors in the back
toward Gregor Gregorovich and the violinist
takes him by the other arm.)
Exit
Peter Golub was born in
Peter Golub nació en Moscou en 1982. Cuando tenía siete anos, se mudó con su familia a los Estados Unidos. Estudió ruso y filosofía en la Universidad de Utah. Corrientemente, estudia poesía en la programa de Master of Fine Arts en la Universidad de Nevada, en Las Vegas, donde también es profesor. Un visitor con frecuencia a su Rusia nativa, Golub pasó el verano de 2006 en Moscou y San Petersburgo, traduciendo la poesía Rusa contemporánea. Algunas de estas traducciones aparecen en Caketrain Issue 04.
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