A Link to Voznesensky
by Hakim
I was very surprised to recently find
that Andrei Voznesensky
has a new career.
While using that wonderful poetic device ‘Google’
I saw the great Russian poet’s name
listed on Linked-In.com.
Once there, I discovered that
Mr Voznesensky is a
“Senior Principal Scientist at Pfizer
in the Hartford,
Connecticut Area.”
And the author of Modern
Nature and
ru and
Dead Still
and my favorite
– Bicycles –
has 50 connections!
And some of my connections know some of his connections…
I am so glad to know that Voznesensky is interested in:
* career opportunities
* consulting offers
* job inquiries
* reference requests
and
* getting back in touch
There is so much we could discuss –
the surreal image,
symbolism and
the use of
synecdoche
in his previous position as
a ‘Principal Research Scientist at Bayer Pharmaceutical.’
Would Boris Pasternak be pleased to know
that his former protégé is now
a member of the
Biotech & Pharma Professionals Network?
Are the poetic influences of Mayakovsky and Neruda
useful in his present endeavors?
If I sound disappointed, well,
that may be true.
I mean, the guy’s got a minor planet
named after him:
‘3723 Voznesenskij.’
And shouldn’t he – after all – be concentrating
on poetry?
So I sent him a message, because
there’s that big blue headline:
“Send a message to Andrei Voznesensky”
and right under it, two golden buttons –
“Contact Directly”
and
“Get Introduced”
(“7 of your trusted connections can introduce you to someone
who knows this person”).
And I wrote,
“So Andrei, how’s it hanging?
Hey, what’s with the job in big pharma?
You’re a genius, man, with medals and shit,
And you ought to be writing those pithy poems
that made you famous.
Keep it real, man,
And don’t forget your roots.
Hakim”
And a couple days later I got this back:
“Sorry to disappoint you,
but the poet you write about
and I
are not even related.
I hope he is not bothered by people
looking for a prescription.
Dos vedanya, AV”
Look at me
Look at these breasts, she
says,
here – look at these hips.
You have longed to possess me
in ten thousand sweat-soaked dreams,
yearned to climb my body like a
bridge.
But I am not for
you –
nor for any like you,
and my flesh is sweet for none
such as you.
I wear the hard polish of eyes,
laid on me
and buffed to a brittle sheen
by the crowd
that would have passed over
the chasm of loneliness
using me
to link the shores.
See my breasts, she
says,
counterpoints to every woman
who despairs at the image in the mirror.
I am beautiful
(and
the refrain
soon becomes)
I am beauty itself.
Watch how I move, she
sighs,
consider how the light seems to change
to accept my grace:
I am nothing
you could touch.
I am like
some perfect fruit (she
whispers)
dew-kissed and ripe with
Spring’s joyous flavor –
but I practice
a careful ignorance
believing my beauty will last,
hoping my happiness will come,
praying to find
my own bridge
in the darkness.
On Hearing That Her Lover Had Died
No reason to live when
half your heart is gone.
His weight in ashes
swirls on winds
within.
The cracked air burns
your eyes and
lungs and
your world
bare
clear to every horizon.
No one
– nothing
– every absolute
a fresh skin for you
now.
Your husband
ignorant
cannot fathom the
tearing of your heart –
his own emptiness
after all
sent you to
the other man.
The other man –
a social acquaintance
grown close
too close
but buoying you up
and keeping you sane
amid the maddening
sameness of your life –
is now gone,
an emptiness
you can taste.
And so farewell
the little pink stallion
the pet names and the
whispers.
Farewell the strength
the touching –
all transcendence now
is his alone.
Farewell the man
who held you
against the world’s pain
and touched you
with bright longing.
Tears run out
across the floor and
might just stop all
clocks –
there is no reason
to take the next breath
but it takes itself and
the world is born again
empty.
The Silent After
Here is how it always happens:
inside an air thick with promise,
myself expanding, intoxicated
I drink the smell of her,
this other woman.
In her essence I revel, dissolute…
until I am reminded of you.
But when we grapple in the dark
[if I close my eyes
and if she does not kiss me]
I can almost convince myself
that I am with you
[your long body enclosing mine]
that this grasped and grasping flesh
is yours,
that these fine ribs against which I push
are yours,
the hot breath in my ear
yours,
and this is not
the colorless imitation of joy
or some lonely exercise
in mutual delusion
[for she always
thinks herself
in love with me]
but actually that sacred act of creation:
the making of love
between me and you.
But if she should
between her cries
seek out my mouth
with hers
and if in whispers she
should kiss me and
plant her taste upon my tongue,
or hold my face
in fevered hands and
look into my eyes,
then
I am pulled again into
the awful reality, jerked
backward
like a hanged man’s last thought –
then the room grows chilly
and the grappling and the cries
are over.
Owed to
TPE: The Piggyback Etiology of acronyms
~
For Estelle Huisclos
she used the term
‘TPE’ and of course
we knew what she
meant but
there are other
acronyms too
that could relate
to total
power exchange.
for instance, she
might be secretly looking for a
Twisted Pair
Ethernet
with
Theater Provided
Equipment
and a
Third Party
Evaluator
making
‘notes’ in a
Tiny Paper Enclosure.
or she could have
in mind a full set of
Trainer-Peculiar Equipment
for
Therapeutic
Patient Education
(where the P =
adjective).
perhaps in her
mind was a
Très Petite Entreprise
or a
Two Phase Extraction
or
even a rather large
Traveling Players
Ensemble.
who can say?
but i think her
freudian slip was inclining
silkily, with
raging static, toward
Trusted Path
Execution
and
Total Performance
Excellence
and
most definitely
Techno Pre
Eminence –
a
veritable
Trading Partner
Exchange
of swooning
moans and excited nerves
that can
be reached by careful
Teaching Performance
Expectations.
of course, she
might be mechanically minded,
rather
expecting a
Total Pelvic
Examination
with some
Transportable
Pressure Equipment
including a soft but firm
Thrust-Plate
Endoprosthesis
for
Total Partner
Experience
on the way
To Peak Ejection.
and wouldn’t that be
True Player
Entertainment?
my heart rests in the mouth of love
stopped
taken from the motion of my life
as its taste
crawls on the tongue
tongue probing
the grinding teeth
the mouth of love
savoring my no-longer-tender heart
pithy
toughened by every caress and absence
resting in the mouth of love
my heart
awaiting the grinding teeth
in the mouth of love
consumed
eaten
tasted
our hearts savored
hungry
ravenous
never satisfied
delicacies
sweet or
bittersweet
where all hearts are savored
for love licks
even the dry
and brittle hearts
in the heavy hours of night
another one gone…
another one
vanished in the mist of sorrow and regret,
slipped from the moorings of
husband and children
escaped the pain
waiting
by a simple expedient
leaving behind
only questions
and tears.
i think of them
when the day comes swinging into night –
those escapadores
who rode the clouds west
out of our sight –
and when the dawn slips
atop my windowsill
pushing the night ahead of it
over the horizon.
what is it about those times of day,
those moments
neither nadir nor zenith –
horizontal,
flat & level –
that brings back the memory
of the ones we loved
and lost?
and when enough of us have gone,
who will tell the stories?
who will remember each embrace
and loving smile?
who will have words
to speak?
who will remember each face
that slipped into
shadows
each voice
trailed into mist?
~ Sarabanda,
Albania, July 2010
The Expected
no matter where we go
no matter what we see or whom we meet –
we will say over and over again
“this is not what i expected”
you can plan
and plan
until your eyelids are tired
you can figure every angle
and rebound
every corner to be turned –
and you will still say over again
“this is not…”
the world is changing
and they say that you cannot
step into the same river
even once –
yet you will find that it escapes your lips
between your thoughts:
“…what i expected”
life is sweet and the world
is large, filled with ponders
of
unpredictability
and one of the beauties that greets us
over and over again
is the surprise in our eyes
when we hear ourselves say
(as if in a dream)
“this is definitely not what i expected”
~ Kavallouri, Kerkyra,
February 2010
Walking the Dogs
~ for Kay T.
it’s twilight.
it is always twilight
it is always twilight
when these feelings come, always
twilight down in her heart
and autumn too
with the smell of leaves blowing
in the wind and
the slanting light
that signals
the end of a time.
she walks slowly
she walks slowly
behind the dogs as
they free up their excitement,
wagging at the ends of their tails,
finding everything
a wonder and a joy.
she pulls at the front of her coat
and wishes
for the freedom
of wonder and joy.
it’s twilight
it’s twilight
and she walks alone
except for the dogs,
but alone
and softly talking to herself
because she has not found
the man to listen,
the man to tell her
anything
much less the things
she longs to hear.
how long since she’s been
touched? how long?
she opens the door, hangs the leashes on the hook,
she opens the door, hangs the leashes on the hook,
pours a cup of tea
and sits in the large empty room.
the book,
the book,
the window, the chair,
the dogs at her feet, nuzzled up together
and wondering when she
will throw open the door of her heart
to someone who
can make her feel
as complete as they do.
she looks at the door
from her chair
by the window,
and tries to not curse it.
~ Palm Springs, 2011
Untitled # 43
Somewhere, a girl waits
to hear the summer words.
Somewhere, her plans
take shape to leave
this sandpaper world
in a pumpkin-flavored coach
(dressed like a 3-tiered cake,
berosed & sugared)
arriving, after
a trip over the moon,
at Big Rock Candy
Mountain
where all the diapers
are filled with diamonds
and the dogs
have rubber teeth.
Meanwhile,
she practices persuasive moans
and eye-swoons
while learning
angelic patience.
Somewhere, a man is
learning
to be not
so much a Turk –
a bit lagging perhaps
to join the modern world
but all of Istanbul
slowed the poor guy down.
~ Hakim,
Kavallouri, Kerkyra, 2010
ULLAGE
Except for old men like me
who thinks of flotsam anymore?
And jetsam?
All those treasures,
dropped for safekeeping
into the depths
still waiting
for the perfect storm
to uncover them
to send them skirling onto beaches
somewhere
to be found anew….
Except for old men,
believers in legend
treasure-seekers
hunting in old books
the dusty records of the dead,
who thinks of flotsam?
Who thinks of what is gone
or hiding
safe in tided
sands?
Do I know you?
All those possibilities of youth
and our lives like casks
to be filled:
knowledge, money, the houses, cars
and spouses.
Could our barrels ever
be big enough?
And here now
after all the days that have
slipped beneath the waves,
so much is gone…
it seems what’s most important
is ullage.
All that’s gone….
the empty place:
Ullage.
On the Death of Tommy Blue Eyes
[Tommy Odom left in a senseless
accident of his own making in the fall of 2004]
And now he is cast out
of the body
that had served him so well,
and from that place he could not
leave before
he is banished
forever.
He fell in the autumn night
and whatever springtime holds,
he’ll see it from afar.
The beauties
we walk among
he’ll know now
as spirits do.
His beauty
we can only
carry with us.
Where before
he was trapped inside
that body, and
couldn’t leave
by whatever means
he tried,
now he cannot get in.
Of all the places on earth
and in the heavens,
it is the one place
forbidden him
any longer….
That single place that was always
his
and his alone.
Misguided once
he is guided
now
by the light,
and shall not waver
as he never wavered
for his friends –
the family he
created
around himself
on that zigzag road
of his life.
Now he is
everywhere
else
but in that body,
locked out,
and it is empty
of him
forever.
– Hakim
David Hakim is an
internationally-published journalist and award-winning author who has run
several newspapers – and recently received a commendation for his short story That
Man in the London Aesthetica
Competition. He can be reached at dhakim at earthlink.net
© 2013 Hakim - ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED: use without profit allowed only with author’s express written
permission. Please don't wake up my attorney. Please.
