04-29-2023, 06:24 AM
(This post was last modified: 04-29-2023, 01:19 PM by RiverNotch.)
1.
Here I lie, unsleeping
three hours after I first
closed my eyes. I tried
praying, first, and it sort of
worked, but whatever
kept me up remained with me
even after my cries
for mercy. So I drifted
towards Jordan Peele's latest
picture, Nope, and the creature there,
the predator in
the shape of an
angel: the screams
of the people it
swallowed, squeezed
into juice, digested -- the buttons,
zippers, rivets, and spare change
it spat out -- it was horror
like Aronofsky's Noah
and the battering of the crowd
clinging on for dear life
on the near-swallowed summit
of Mount Ararat.
I quite enjoyed it.
2.
I always say I visited Russia
before this damned war, meaning
not just their invasion of Donbas
but also their invasion of Crimea,
but even this correction masks
the reality of their situation.
Walking down Red Square, we were greeted
by buskers in the shape
of Mandelstam's roaches
or the satanic terror
behind Akhmatova's requiem
that you could swear was worse
than what Benjamin or Radnoti
had faced. Perhaps he was,
less by sheer numbers
than by that oft
omitted pact....
Eleven years before
twenty-fourteen, there was
a peaceful change in the government
of Tbilisi. Five years after that
Putin swept in
to take Abkhazia and Ossetia.
That I have to write this
here, as a reminder,
speaks to just how little
the world actually cared....
Lucky Prince Ivan,
his treacherous older brothers,
the Firebird showing off
her feathers as a tease,
or the shadowy Wolf
who first played the predator
then the Prince's faithful mount....
Recall now Eisenstein,
how his Ivan Grozny
failed in Stalin's eyes
because the titular Tsar
was troubled by a conscience.
Five hundred years
of autocracy. Twenty five generations
that know little better....
Original broken up like a protest.
Here I lie, unsleeping
three hours after I first
closed my eyes. I tried
praying, first, and it sort of
worked, but whatever
kept me up remained with me
even after my cries
for mercy. So I drifted
towards Jordan Peele's latest
picture, Nope, and the creature there,
the predator in
the shape of an
angel: the screams
of the people it
swallowed, squeezed
into juice, digested -- the buttons,
zippers, rivets, and spare change
it spat out -- it was horror
like Aronofsky's Noah
and the battering of the crowd
clinging on for dear life
on the near-swallowed summit
of Mount Ararat.
I quite enjoyed it.
2.
I always say I visited Russia
before this damned war, meaning
not just their invasion of Donbas
but also their invasion of Crimea,
but even this correction masks
the reality of their situation.
Walking down Red Square, we were greeted
by buskers in the shape
of Mandelstam's roaches
or the satanic terror
behind Akhmatova's requiem
that you could swear was worse
than what Benjamin or Radnoti
had faced. Perhaps he was,
less by sheer numbers
than by that oft
omitted pact....
Eleven years before
twenty-fourteen, there was
a peaceful change in the government
of Tbilisi. Five years after that
Putin swept in
to take Abkhazia and Ossetia.
That I have to write this
here, as a reminder,
speaks to just how little
the world actually cared....
Lucky Prince Ivan,
his treacherous older brothers,
the Firebird showing off
her feathers as a tease,
or the shadowy Wolf
who first played the predator
then the Prince's faithful mount....
Recall now Eisenstein,
how his Ivan Grozny
failed in Stalin's eyes
because the titular Tsar
was troubled by a conscience.
Five hundred years
of autocracy. Twenty five generations
that know little better....
Original broken up like a protest.