Masha

Her bony fingers

whisper on the guitar

in our wooden corner.

Her withered cry “пора домой”

paints far away

imaginings of home.

We walk at night

along the pedestrian street, unimportant

figures, shadows under city lights

and stop for dirt-cheap pelmeni

drowned in mayonnaise.

She drinks her beer

Like a child drinks juice;

I bite my lip.

The city is cruel and swallows her;

cigarette coughs shake her skeleton.

On future nights

when I breathe smoke

and hear folk guitar

her ice-blue eyes will haunt me.

Harley

A black beret makes him blend

Into the clones of Russian men.

His eyes speak an enigma tongue

that leaves a funny taste on your own;

His eyes tattoo a question

on your heart,

you cannot find words for it.

His eyes conceal and tease,

withdraw so close to Eureka.

His eyes love to laugh,

and find humor in youthful ignorance.

Silky lines of Pushkin

mete his Koroviev gait

His voice is high and crackly,

“Люблю тебя петра творенье”

His voice is ripened wine,

“Люблю твой строгий стройный вид”

His voice is shadow of story,

“Невы державное теченье”

His voice is mystery,

“Береговой ее гранит.”

We always wondered

what hid in his secret room,

but even more, what hid

in his mind.

Flashes of Memory: Part One

Dedicated to my fellow RSPers.

Beginnings

Russia, we said

to all those people

asking

Why? Why

go to that place

of Communism

snow huts

vodka and caviar?

(The center

of all that is

evil,

you know).

Of course we went

not knowing gravity’s laws

would overwhelm us

with the force of

the Neva

on her flooding days.

Two suitcases bulged with

winter boots

peanut butter,

questions

in a Starbucks kiosk

a random group (impossible)

we hid

expectations

at the diving board

of new,

new strangers

on a common, unknown path.

You remember

we started out that life

in a St. Petersburg series;

a purgatory of

American cafes

Subways

grudgingly catering

to our untrained tourist tongues

drowned

by the metro

in her rhythmic, faithful scream

Brought us to palaces,

and tapestries of riches

stunned with newborn child awe

(at first) then melted

into thin broth,

common

in the brazen repetition

of fairy tale fountains,

glittering domes, gold

halls that reached on

in yawning infinity

where the tsar had strode.

The gaudy weight

like lead, burdened

for stories of peasants

shivering in izbas

with seven children and tattered rags

praising the tsar,

their little father

in his dreamlike

removed from life

excessiveness.

We were removed

birds free from the earth

flying

over blurry wholeness.

We were spectators,

testing, twirling our forks,

adventurous, through

the beets and cabbage

(we used to think were strange).

We were blind,

squinting

at an unwashed window

concealing,

revealing a smidgen

a spark

of the soul that

longed to reveal itself

In the canyon eyes of

people

who would embed our hearts

with words

that have no written form.

Tear the Veil

One humid night in April, I was walking back to my dorm and God  struck me utterly with  the truth of himself: his love, his grace, his nearness. Everything that I believed became clear to me and I felt I could almost touch all those truths that somehow manage to remain in my head, yet fail to penetrate my heart. I wrote this poem after I got back, struck by the monotony and disinterest we as Christians find ourselves fighting against everyday. I wrote these words asking God to let me not pass by his  unhuman, sacrificial love that I so often ignore or count as common.

Tear the Veil

 In humid breath of quiet night your meaning dances free,

And joyful darkness sways in time with whispered mystery,

The veiled emerges, twirling in a stunning splash of red,

Enlightens, then retreats into a specter of the dead.

Your clarity abstracted; in the daylight smog it seems

That hopes you spoke into the soul are only distant dreams

I strain to capture, resurrect the clarity I knew

But every try dissolves to a diluted, weakened brew.

Metaphors may try to breathe your precious cry

But only do in vain, and fade into a lie.

They lie in droning songs, that chant the same cliché,

That knock on Wisdom’s door, but mouth the truth away.

The curse of earth to birth pretensions covering the right

Drags men and women forward with the hollow clone of light.

Seeing but not seeing, singing without song,

The chosen roam in comatose believing of the wrong.

The good men filled with hunger race after worms and mold,

Mirages tantalize the wise when thirst has got its hold,

Blindfolds mock the chosen ones, who think they have their sight,

Eclipses blind and shatter life with brilliant streams of light.

Truth caged in a dimension, only touched in times

When souls are quiet, fixed on whispers far beyond the rhymes.

But days of stale monotony exalt the longing sigh,

The goal of motion, meaning sought within the laughing lie.

So bring back color, vibrancy to black and white review,

Define the wine, the bread; refresh with glimpses of the new.

Come break the barricades to meaning guarded by the lies,

And shatter repetition with your wordless loving eyes.

The Magician's Daughter

The Magician’s Daughter

Some of my first memories in that little house

Were of Daddy juggling with me in the breezeway,

Two red balls turned into three, into dreams of a life on the stage.

The living room spoke an enchanted language of diamonds and spades

Of Queens and Kings

Of silver rings that mystically linked and a black and white wand.

Here he lived life that was hours of work for an hour of fame.

The blood, sweat and tears were all worth it

For my hero card shark.

Every summer we adventured three hours from home

Past the grassy fairy tale bogs

To a familiar campground.

I’d join him up on the wooden stage

The princess of the kingdom.

After the show I was met by demanding voices

 “Tell us the secret!”

“No”, I said. A good magician never tells.

I had the key to the coveted secret,

I had the key to something more.

Bright lights blazed in my eyes

As he floated me to Oriental music

Or we tossed six flashing clubs

And I drank the applause of the dark apparitions;

The stage was my home.

On those long car trips home through summery Maine

I leaned my cheek on the sheer glass

Following powdered sugar stars on walls of navy ice,

Or if my brother was there

We’d giggle in our late night childish joy,

We were made up characters from a different world

In more than one way.

Sometimes Dad would leave for two weeks

Away

To Italy

To Japan

Knowing his return meant hugs and foreign treasures

I stayed up late those nights

Awaiting the sound of a car pulling in

The engine stopping

The key turning

The door opening

Ambushing him with hugs, our unraveled traveler

Jet-lagged, but smiling,

Finally home.

He went to Germany,

So long ago, a flash

A memory because

 Daddy brought me my teddy bear

Cuddly, a token of the days that breathed me into

Spoke me into who I am today.

Different always

Always breathing

The envious breath when confined to the audience,

Red velvet chairs make me squirm

When spotlights flash and beckon me forward,

To venture further and find the fierce adrenaline-joy

That he taught me to love.

Daddy’s blue eyes in me as I live and write and breathe I am

A magician’s daughter.