Russian Women

You swing of necessity into male rhythms
that at once become female rhythms;
you take high place
as hills take sun —
being inevitable there
in the path of the sun.
Yet in you there is no peace,
but infinite collisions,
impact of charged atoms
in ceaseless vibration.
In you unimagined circuits,
in you uncoiled
passion electric —
the stroke swift
and the recoil as swift . . .
in you the unidentified power —
hysteria directed,
the world force.

 

The White Bird

Man of the flame-eyes
And mouth with the bitter twist of ingrown laughter,
And little bald man . . . whose seeming stillness
Is askin to the velocity of a spinning star
Holding its perfect poise —
You two yea-sayers
Beetling over the little deniers,
Two great levelers, building from the earth up                                                                                                                                              among puttiers and sluggers of rotten piles —
You of the life running in ample measure                                                                                                                                                        amidst life deleted of its old raw fire                                                                                                                                                          as earth is deleted of its coal and iron —
You be mighty hunters and keepers,
Trotsky and Lenin —
Yet can you hold
The unconstrainable One
Of the slow and flaming deaths
And multiple resurrections?

Hands, reaching in hundreds of millions,
Backs, straightening under the keeling floor of the world,
Can you hold the great white bird?
— She that sweeps low over the chain-gangs
When they glance up from their stone-breaking
Into the morning’s burning gold —
She that goes down into underground cells
Sending the cool wind of her wings
Through unsevering stone . . .
And departs, unbeknown, from those who announce her,
Saying : lo, she is ours!

Ah what a mighty destiny would be yours,
Should you persuade her —
The unconstrainable One
Who has slid out of the arms of so many lovers,
Leaving not a feather in their hands.

 

Re-Birth

Though your wild dreams
May die perhaps on the cemented stone
That they have cracked asunder . . . making way
For lopped things trampled in the dust and blood
Of the year’s barricades . . . and hopes that died
Alone against blank walls . . . yet what new growths
Against the cobbled ways . . . and all the green
Battened down dreams of the world quickening . . .
Like spirals of aborted pines that strain
To touch their tips with stars.

(from Lola Ridge | To the Many)

 

You’re a bumper, shock  absorbers, brake pads
You’re a scab, an officer in plain clothes, a plant with a sewing machine
You’re the Christian indie rock band on the Kill Rock Stars label
You’re the ambient mumbling of Interpol & attenuation
You know who you are
I am Keyser Söze, one of those women
Who hits back, I’m not interested in your metaphysics or discretion
Your inability to drive on the interstate or let your inner hyena out
I don’t care if you can sympathize with the sentiment                                                                                                                                                                           Dude, you’re an asshole
With your perfect playlist & spotless dance floor
With your simultaneous offerings of whisky, drinking etiquette & coffee
I refuse to dance at your lock-in or be ambushed
By your youth group, I refuse to call a dozen people wearing red
Awkwardly nursing their margaritas in a kitchen
A red party                              I promise you will be negated
Fuck the Burning Man you read about

 

5 Out of 13 Ways of Looking at Poetry
Not Being Enough

1.
If you were to wear a shirt that said LEAVE ME ALONE
People might not talk to you or harass you or assault you.
You might put them off. You might manage
To trick them, this time. That you weren’t even trying
Is a terrible sign — like an intersection with signs
That say DON’T STOP KEEP GOING.

2.
It’s the difference between ALL ROADS LEAD
TO THE KILL FLOOR & YOU CAN SEE
YOURSELF OUT. I’m talking about the promises
Of art & promises of civil war. I’m saying the coldness
Of that adjective is no match for the heat in parts of the south
Or for being without water or running out of food.

3.
People make things that reflect how they live, where.
These things are not to be confused with the shadows
They cast. When I write a poem I write about things
Like shadows, execute certain tricks. I can see why
People have compared it to dance, but have you ever
Danced in the streets? It’s better not to do it by yourself.

4.
Terrorist attacks are a consequence of wars
You’re not supposed to know about. Planes
Flying into towers don’t start wars more than you
Not shopping. It’s no wonder you believe magicians are men
With magic hats that double as wormholes for rabbits
From galaxies far far away & magical women for so long.

5.
At most, I can see a painting being like a bluff, a view
Of the back of your opponent’s cards when you’re playing
For money & you’ve already lost more than you planned.
But your relationship with it isn’t the most important
Or interesting one. Your love won’t change what a painting
I, which is someone’s time spent working for someone else.

 

Revolutionary Letter

one thing i’ve learned / come to a provisional conclusion about:
when it comes to fighting, there are people who will help you
fight & there are people who will not & there are people
who will stand in the way. find the people who will help / be loud
& clear so they know where you are — focus on them, be encouraged
by them, encourage them, work with them. don’t worry
about the people who won’t help. they will be of no help even
if they are on your side. waste as little energy as possible
fighting people who stand in the way, which is to say don’t talk
don’t argue, just get them out of the way of the fight you came for.

tl;dr: you don’t need or want
the people who you know
aren’t “with you“ to be
with you. really, you don’t

(from Wendy Trevino | Cruel Fiction)

 

 

 

the unvomited

 

vomit vomit vomit vomit vomit vomit vomit

 

pain
name

 

the place has no
name
is not a place

 

say syria, palestine, hungary, germany, england and others
say it’s easier to destroy the world
than to destroy capitalism
capitalism

 

say black square
is the place

 

in which
dead do walk

 

overlapping
not overlapping

 

 

Thatcher’s dead

 

on the way to the party on the 159 did you
know that Jimmy Savile was a friend of
Thatcher’s and what about all the other child
molesters but Rolf Harris wasn’t was he i was
fined 80 quid for pissing in the street did you
know if a pregnant woman wants to piss a
policeman is obliged to hold up his cape and
protect her the one who said that was
probably a cop SWP he said

 

inside a crime
is where i’m going

 

Margaret Thatcher died today
long live death i shouted
that’s a fascist slogan you said
it’s ours today i said
viva la muerte

 

her bag of bleeding flesh
and the cynical morning
and the murderous sky
let the music vomit her out

 

it would be better if you lined them up
against a wall and shot them than this grinding

 

i would not wish death on anyone
you said

 

i don’t desire to break her law
i want to have done with it
viva la muerte

 

 

her wildly screaming

 

the spirit of ever-living and unwritten wilderness
and of the world of the dead — Hölderlin, ‘Antigone’.

 

her wild tears
at dawn
cut the knot of pleasure
with total scission

someone else is the witness
there is no witness
spectres turn away

 

ah corpse-eaters
and murderers of the dead
oh tories and labour and corporations and hedge funds and IMF and
ECB and EU finance ministers
and all you who shit on the poor the disabled the out of work the
non-bullies the exploited in bullshit jobs
the unnecessary
you’re the dead dead

the immortal dead
wait for justice

no more suicides!

(from William Rowe | Collected Poems)

 

 

 

Transitory, Momentary

 

 

 

 

 

Tongo Eisen-Martin

 

 

 

 

 

Kirill Mevedev

Attack on City Hall

they said we could have an antifascist meeting, but not a march.
the human rights activist Lev Ponomarev and I went to City Hall
to find out what was up.
Ponomarev was very angry. I tried to restrain him
“I’ll teach them to let the fascists march,“ he said.
You got the feeling this wasn’t going to end well.

The deputy head of the department for large demonstrations, Vasily Oleynik,
turned out to be a fat rosy little man.

“You see,“ he began, smiling, “the decision on this matter has already been made.”
“Do you know Russian?“ Ponomarev asked grimly.
“But we’re speaking Russian right now!” said Oleynik.
“No. If that’s how you begin a conversation, then you don’t know Russian,“
said Ponomarev.

That’s how it began, with a little light antagonism,
but then it seemed to improve.
There was smiling, and diplomacy.
“But of course you understand, Lev Alexandrovich.“
“Yes of course, Vasily Vasilievich.”

“We already told everyone about the march,” I said grimly.
“There’s no going back.” Oleynik began citing legalities.
Pono gave as good as he got
in that department,
and my attention wandered a little.
Once they start in with the clauses and sub-clauses and anti-clauses
everything turns into a joke, a scam, like in court
(and I don’t like these kinds of scams).
Outside, I could see the river.
I recalled how, on October 2, 1993, the night before the opposition
stormed City Hall,
the cops took a group of us in
for supposedly breaking a window at the self-same City Hall.
At the precinct I argued very convincingly
that we hadn’t broken any windows,
and the cops let us go.
Later on it turned out that the window had been broken
by me,
but I’d forgotten.
Oh holy drunkenness!
How easy and pleasant it is to lie!
Have you heard how jackals cry?
Now, in City Hall, I remember the cry of some jackals in an Abkhazian village.
It’s not even a cry,
It’s like some wedding party has spilled out into the
street.
Spills out and yells and sings and sings aloud!
in that village the people feared an invasion of raccoons, from the north,
from the Russian border.
I was startled from these thoughts by noises in the office —

a crunching, running, turning over of chairs —
my worst fears had materialized —
Ponomarev was beating the shit out of Oleynik!

I started running around him, crying,
“Lev Alexandrovich, no, don’t,
oy, please don’t, why?”

Through my protestations you could hear
Oleynik, moaning,
then he stopped moaning, because I started thinking,
and it was as if the sound
had been turned off, leaving only he picture, which unspooled in slow motion.

Nor could I hear what Ponomarev was saying.
But what can a person say who’s proudly defending
his rights?
But he was talking:
“I know you, you spoiled little socialists,
unable to defend yourselves or others.
Quasi-sectarians, children,
ignorant of your rights.
Little marginal whiners.

Old maids from the library.
Are you a subculture or a political party —
make up your minds —
what are you?”

Oleynik’s boss, Kadatsky, didn’t come
to the aid of his deputy. He was at a meeting.
He’d sent Oleynik to meet with us
but didn’t come to help him, just stayed at the meeting.
Coward.
A sense of one’s rights gives a person physical force,
I thought, watching as Pono smashed up Oleynik.
Whereas we, on the left, never really feel our rights,
just the ephemeral right to utopia.
All those years of discussing the victims of the revolution
have frozen our blood,
have turned us into
frightened ducklings, unable to defend our own rights,
much less someone else’s,
thought I, already out into the street,
out of that hell,
riding the subway home late in the evening.
And I’d have kept thinking this way,
for quite a while,
except the I got an email from Ponomarev:
They still hadn’t allowed the march.
Tomorrow we head again for City Hall.

 

§

On the way to defend the forest
I thought about powerlessness.
In my mind I turned over the old thought about how
the use of weapons is the sign of powerlessness.
That’s what I was thinking about
when a division of the OMON riot police started coming toward us,
and everyone freaked out, not from a philosophical but from a
very earthly and real feeling of powerlessness.
I giddily recalled a line from some anarchist manifesto
about how only those who have weapons
are able to philosophize about pacifism.
if they just gave us some weapons, I thought, we could do some great
philosophizing about pacifism.
And then suddenly from this apex of our powerlessness a weapon appeared:

We parted and from out of this mass of student-pacifists, useless
intellectuals and local pensioners,
a machine gun started firing.
The OMON troops started falling
like the trees of the Khimki forest.
“But the main thing is for there to be no revolution,“ said the environmentalist Evgenia Chirikova
as we stood over the bloody troops of the riot police wondering what to do next.
“There were fewer people killed during the October Revolution than there were today,“ I said.
“But then consider how many people were killed during the civil war,“ said Mikhail, next to me.
“That’s because the army and the police didn’t come over to the side of the people,“
said someone else nearby,
and then we drank a little vodka,
we all drank for the police and the army
to come over to the side of the people,
that is to say our side,
and at that moment we saw on the highway,
dressed up as OMON fighters
in camouflage suits the color of the forest,
our reinforcements were on their way.

IN THE SUMMER OF 2010, MANY RUSSIAN ACTIVISTS, INCLUDING MEDVEDEV, BECAME INVOLVED IN AN ATTEMPT TO KEEP THE GOVERNMENT FROM RUNNING THE NEW MOSCOW-PETERSBURG HIGHWAY THROUGH THE HEART OF THE KHIMKI FOREST NORTH OF MOSCOW.

 

§

if you’re having some problems, or feeling sad, I recommend you take a weekend evening
and go with a group of antifascists to Myasnitskaya Street, next to the Moo-Moo Cafe,
and while hearing people honking in the distance start heading for the center,
reach the beautiful empty square at Lubyanka,
pass by the FSB thinking about
how one day we’ll pass by this rotten citadel
in such a way that nothing
will be left of it,
round the corner and find,
to your surprise, that the guards at Lubyanka aren’t reacting at all,
are even, it seems, showing you respect,
reach Kuznetsky Most while shouting “Freedom to Denis Solopov!”
and
“Don’t stop antifa!“
sense with a light euphoria that today the center is ours,
watch as a comrade turns over a metal barricade next to the entrance to the FSB,
watch as he’s attacked by a policeman, watch as those near him pull the policeman off, keep walking down Kuznetsky,
wonder why everyone seems so relaxed
today, reach Tverskaya, all thirty of you,
and block one half of it to traffic before, finally sensing a cop car behind you,
scattering next to Okhotny Ryad,
keep in mind that this is not in the end a panacea,
it’s not even really medicine,
this is a political act and nothing more,
so if you have a problem then after a while
you’ll still have to figure out how to solve your problem,
but antidepressant won’t help anymore, psychotherapy
won’t help, books and CDs won’t help, nothing that you bury your lives into
thinking that this is the sad but only possible fate for a
free human being
will help.

 

§

The wife of an activist who died under strange circumstances,
though more likely than not it was an accident,
says to me that she literally finds herself shaking
from everything that’s going on, the arrests and the interrogations of activists…
I’m sure you know the story of N, she says.
A labor activist, they planted drugs on him, he got five years.
International campaigns have proved useless.
Yes, i said, I know, of course.
So what can we do, she says, what sort of action can we plan,
so that everyone finds out? What should we do?
And I say, we have two choices. Either we patiently build the
labor unions… or we have to do something really ugly,
because no radical art actions are gong to help here,
are going to get through.
And she says, yes, and then what? We commit a terrorist act? That’s the same thing
right now
as sticking your head out of the trench,
and getting it blown off…
And as for labor unions, she says,
I know the labor activists,
they’re wonderful people, but
it’s all
so slow…
How long will it take,
although, it’s true, it’s the only way.
in the end it’s the labor unions
that are the true workshop of communism.
Yes, I say, right now that’s the situation,
no matter what anyone says,
and who knows what the future may bring, but for the moment
the progressive labor activists have a higher political consciousness
than the intellectuals.
than the professors,
it’s just too bad there are so few of them.
But strategically that’s the most important thing.
She says, You’re right, I’m disappointed I wasn’t able to unionize
the supervisors,
they’re too dependent on their private interests…
Night comes on
the cold streams in, streams in, streams in,
and enters
through the gates, through our sleeves
through our skin
enters our blood,
and somewhere in a warm room
on a soft be on white
sheets
a pretty young mother
is stroking her little child
sleep sleep sleep my little one
sleep my baby child
sleep sleep don’t listen
to the wind howling
the cars rustling
sleep tighter my little one
gather strength
you’ll need lots of strength
the working class needs brave strong tough fighters
there are difficult times ahead.

(from Kirill Medvedev | It’s No Good)