Roman

Morbid expectation shivers
through the fusty air
as every bottom shifts and shuffles
on its creaking chair.

The medium, his eyes wide shut,
is fumbling for a lead
and plugs himself at last into
the supernatural grid.

“Does anybody know a Brian
who rewired toasters,
who drank rice wine and holidayed
down on the Cornish coast as

often as he could, 
who had a parrot with a lisp,
whose hands were swollen from 
an altercation with a wasp?”

A white-haired woman with two needles,
purling, stitching ably,
stops and strokes her wispy chin,
then tosses forth a “maybe”.

All eyeballs swivel round. “Ah, no.
It wasn’t toasters. Egg-whisks.
I still can see them clear as day,
all cluttering up his work-desks.”

And thus I learn this lady’s gate
was painted by a Frenchman
from Brian, as he beams and bounces
round the fifth dimension.

My dream is punctured by
the pointed finger of a showman
who belts out, “You there, sir!
I see you have some link to Poland!

I’ve got a Polish soldier here,
who fell in World War Two.
This – Piosowski? – tells me that
he took a shine to you,

and now he’s watching over you.
His name is Piosowski
or something similar. My hearing
might be slightly off-key.”

Those words march through my mind 
as I sit brooding in the clouds
and drag my battered suitcase
through the passport-clasping crowds,

as I meander through the knobbly,
squirrel-rustled elms
and past Cyrillic black-starred warnings
cloaked in silky films.

Roman Piotrowski.
There he basks among his comrades,
indifferent to invasions
and impervious to bomb raids.

Born twenty-two. Died forty-five,
just three short months from peace,
from Stalin’s different-coloured jackboot
stamping on his face.

“Hello there, Roman. How are you,
here in this hall of death?
Perhaps you’ve seen me dashing past
or grasping out for breath.

Not even twenty-three, you were.
Still on the porch of life.
Perhaps you’d never tasted
the devotion of a wife.

Now, that we’d have in common. 
Is that why you took to me?
Two aeroplanes devoid of wings,
two locks without a key.

So, concrete-backboned patriot,
how’s life beyond the grave,
beyond our trivial little world
that no-one wants to save?

You tried your best for sure, old chap,
so thanks for all your effort,
but all those joys you garnered from
the old world have been severed

from us here in our microchipped
and shifty chapter of history,
our age of raving, dogma-buzzing,
liberty-loathing wizardry.

It’s such a theft, a foppish sophist-
stuffed fascistic hoax.
A bourgeoisie gorged with inversions
blathers moral vogues,

young visionaries jammed
with zeal and vigour trade their blood
for ketchup, for acceptance,
in a culture-slashing cut.

Patriots can’t be patriots now,
since that’s the pit of evil,
or men be men or women women,
people just be people.

When looking righteous trumps free thought,
there is no thought at all.
When fitting in trumps questioning,
society will fall.

Now vanity trumps self-protection.
Thus, my country’s fallen.
The whole of Western Europe’s
disappearing up its colon.

They cannot see that those
in golden gloves, who crush the workers,
are those who cram their skulls with sludge
and flood their streets with burqas.

This race towards conformity
will squash men’s minds in jars,
so those who will not think in line
must wither behind bars.

The school of history is standing
rat-invaded, derelict.
The brainwash-boomerang, once more,
decapitates the heretic.

They think they’re on the brink
of some rebellious rainbow age,
these robots cheering, marching off 
into their rabbit cage.

Your people, meanwhile, most of them,
are snoozing, so it seems,
cocooned in missile-cushioned, twelve-starred,
dollar-splashing dreams.

Sobieski’s men, who spanked the sultan’s arse
and saved the continent,
are pouring tea and skiing while
barbarians choke the Occident.

Does any of this matter, Roman?
Is it worth the fight?
Tell me please, old soldier bathing
in eternal light.”

Clerihews 3

Adolf Hitler
was peeved that Germany was littler
than Russia, but Luxembourg was the littlest.
And it was on his hit list.

Joseph Stalin
would have said, if he’d been a Feminist, “I’m not your darling,
you patriarchal poo-bag.
Go to the gulag.”

Margaret Thatcher.
Who would dispatch her?
Perhaps those who wanted to drag England snoozing and snoring
into a globalist whores’ ring.

Horst Seehofer,
Merkel’s illuminati gofer,
the Bavarian without balls, the eunuch
of Munich.

Mikhail Gorbachev
called Russia’s Communist mortgage off
and let America throw its debauched
degenerate orgy on the front porch.

Markus Meechan
had his life shredded by our virtuous beacon
of justice, for training a cute
little puppy to do a Nazi salute.

Danny Baker,
fired from the BBC propaganda-maker
for comparing Prince Archie to a chimp,
apologised like a wimp.

John F Kennedy
had a glimmering remedy
for the coming fascist global tangle,
so he was shot in the head from an unlikely angle.

The Stasi are Redecorating my House

The Stasi are redecorating my house,
they’re giving the stairs a good polish.
They’ve been out of work since the springtime of glasnost,
with precious few folk to admonish.

The Stasi are redecorating my house,
and now microphones hang from the cornice.
I asked when they’re going to knock the wall through,
and that seemed to engender some soreness.

Reading Lucy’s Old Poetry

It was three and a half inexperienced years
before the first time I would ever
see your pale and puzzled face,
call you by name or absorb your
surprise-laden, whirlpooling words.

Tita the Peruvian clairvoyant, her
mascara garnishing her scrunched-up eyes,
gripping crystals over tarot cards
like an extra-terrestrial gripping
a spaceship steering wheel, proclaimed:
“I see a girl who’s always on your mind.
You’re thinking and thinking and thinking about
this girl, but she’s not right for you.
She’s depressed and my god, she has problems!”

I was twenty-three, fresh out of university.
You were fifteen and about to begin
your second year of supervised,
pill-stuffed, couch-bound,
injected captivity.
You scratched your head until it bled,
you swallowed those pills without stopping to count them,
you poured out:

          “Broken glass, broken girl.
          Useless mask, useless world.
          Fighting temptation, fighting knives.
          Numbed sensations, numbed goodbyes.
          Maybe rope, maybe trees.
          Dying hope, dying me.”

I thought I’d never drink your words again
once you’d flushed them down the online plughole,
but there they are,
splashing across my computer,
intoxicating me.

You must have thought I understood.
You must have thought you’d pushed enough
cuckoo’s nest-shaped hints in my direction.
You must have thought I’d soaked up every single poem.
You must have thought I understood.

“You’d have to be prepared for me,
I am a bit strange.”
That was your warning sign.
“No problem, I see you’re a couple of pips
short of a satsuma.”

I only thought you were 
eccentric.

If someone’s a “borderline fishing enthusiast”,
what does that mean? That they toss the odd hook.
It doesn’t mean they stink of haddock
morning, noon and night.

You hid below your bedsheets and illusions,
you hurtled as fast as you could from reality,
you pulled your sleeves down over freckly, scissored arms,
you poured out:

          “To write what needs to be written
          would be to face, to think,
          maybe to run to my own brink,
          yet to go with my flow,
          let passing thoughts go,
          may be more risky than to delve
          and resign myself
          to a mental age of twelve.”

I don’t remember that one. Jesus.

Twelve years later, you’re still twelve.
You’re thirty now, but still, you’re twelve.
Your parents are seventy. They’re still twelve.
Is everyone around you twelve,
or just tongueless? It’s like
‘Lord of the Flies’ in your bit of the universe.

Am I a paedophile, is that it?

No. If I’d known, I would never have kissed you.
I’d never have gazed in your crazy blue eyes
and sighed, “I love you, ginger kitten.”

But you were home and youth to me,
you were London and you were the working class,
you were Dorothy Parker, not Sylvia Plath,
and you were my rebellion partner,
the childhood sweetheart
I never had
in this world full of nothing,
schools and colleges of nothing,
universities of nothing,
bars and pubs and clubs of nothing,
offices, canteens of nothing,
studios and banks of nothing,
galleries and halls of nothing,
towns and cities full of nothing,
nations, cultures full of nothing,
brains and mouths and hearts of nothing.

You were something.

We were something.

We were the poets of
a gasping breed, the final Cockneys,
the remnants of working-class London,
the remnants of a shrivelled culture.

But you baffled and blocked me off,
you elbowed me, blindfolded, into a swamp,
you lied and denied and you cast me aside,
you poured out:

          “I don’t want to get better,
          I’ll be fine as I am now.
          Stop writing me letters,
          stop spinning me around.
          Why are you doing this?
          I don’t need your eyes to see.
          Why are you pushing this?
          Stop it, stop hurting me.”

I don’t remember that one either.

Christ, If I had, I would never have
chased after that mirage called hope,
would never have sprayed half my youth down the drain
by battling your poetry-moated
castles of silence
with my broken little catapults of love.

What fun it must be to be sick.
What fun it must be to inhabit a planet
where nothing is ever your fault,
nothing’s ever your responsibility,
where problems are buried
a hundred kilometres under the ground,
not solved,
where no-one’s feelings count but yours,
where silence reigns supreme,
where you may not be criticised,
you cannot feel a drop of love
for yourself or for anyone else
and suicide’s your only hope,
where you’re twelve years old until you die
and the truth eats away at your brain
like battery acid.

That’s right, love. Don’t get better.
You’ll be fine as you are.

It was fourteen experience-buffeted months
after the last time I ever would see
your seething, puzzling face.

Tita the Peruvian clairvoyant, her
earrings swinging in the mystic air
below paintings of Jesus and Buddha, proclaimed:
“There was some kind of problem that you didn’t see,
something you missed.
Now there’s unfinished business between you,
a strange situation that hasn’t been sorted.
She’s gone, but she’s still there.”

118 Hampton Road, Bristol (Deutsche Version)

Es schoss meine nase hinauf
wie ein zitronensaftgetauchter besenstiel
und während ich nach wasser hustete und nach der toilette
donnerte, glitt der gedanke durch mein gehirn
dass ich niemals drogen mit nummern im namen 
vertrauen sollte. Minuten später,
in einer kerkerschwarzen kammer
und einem kriegszustand mit dem magen,
während mein tinnitus in gelb und grün
in der ecke meines linken auges fortblinkte,
grub ein pyrotechnisches pirouettendrehendes gespenst 
einen umhüllten skelettierten finger 
in mein verständnis des universums. 
Ich antwortete, “Echt?
Hmm. Es ist so, dann? Richtig, alles klar,” 
bevor der kammer wuchsen dachbalken, ein bogen, 
buntes glas und blinkende kruzifixe 
und, landend zurück im partyzimmer das mit licht verhörte,
ich fragte, “Fühlst du dich wie du
in einer mittelalterlichen kirche gefangen bist?
Bei mir, doch.”

Und dann entdeckte ich das zeug des lebens.
Orangenschale.
Mit ihrem scheusslich unterschätzten matratzigen mark, 
der schönste stoff den ich jemals gestreichelt hatte, 
ihn in stücke reissend und sie zum himmel schleudernd
mit einem “Hurra!” als sie zurück nach unten 
auf meinen erhabenen neuerleuchteten kopf knallten. 
“Ich mach keinen sinn!” schloss ich. “Auch keiner von euch macht sinn. 
Das einzige das sinn macht ist diese orangenschale,” und, 
frauenwäsche über dem gesicht um den sirenenschein der glühbirne
zu verbarrikadieren, verbrachten wir etwas zeit zusammen,
nur ich und die orangenschale
und die gelegentlichen zischenden kreuze 
oder engel oder phantome oder wasserspeier
oder tinnitussprühen oder sich drehende wagenräder
und es war mein glücklichster moment seit
jener party bei der ein medizinball von der decke hing, an einem seil 
das meine arme violettisierte als ich danach griff
und eine mannschaft von hausbesetzern 
mich schleuderte, herum und herum und herum und herum
höher schneller höher schneller höher schneller
höher als die dachbodenklappe der tibetischen Zentralbank
bevor ich stück für stück für stück für stück stoppte, 
fuss im seil verfangen, 
den kiefernhölzernen boden entlang geschleift worden
wie ein ranzen in der hand eines schuljungen,
während die mietenausweicher, mit  
aller dynamik die sie aufbringen konnten, allen gesprungenen tritten
die sie hätten abfeuern können, den ball 
der aus einem grund den ich nicht begriff mit erdnüssen gefüllt war,
schlugen und zum schrumpfen brachten
also gackerte ich wie ein dummkopf
als ich am boden gefangen lag, in einem schauer
von erdnüssen und erdnüssen und erdnussstaub
und erdnüssen und erdnüssen und erdnussstaub
und erdnüssen und erdnüssen und erdnussstaub

und dann ging mir
die orangenschale aus.

“Hilfe! Im namen des Herren! Ich bitte Sie! 
Für die liebe von Christus und allen den heiligen im Himmel,
geben Sie mir nur ein stück orangenschale!”
heulte ich aus meinem herzen,
aber als ich über den teppich erdferkelte
mit gelächter bereit zu bersten, brüllend wie ein sturm, 
während orangenschalenstücke
aus allen ecken des zimmers auf mich herabprasselten,
kanonenkugelte in mein gehirn ein gedächtnis
einer schizophrenen frau ausserhalb meines hauses, die mit kummer
um ihre entlaufene tochter vergiftet war,
die mich um hilfe herumfuchtelte
und meinen namen gurgelte. “Bitte!”,
jaulte sie. “Ich bitte Sie!”
Ellenbogen am boden,
von orangenschalen bedeckt, 
brüllendem gelächter bis zum stillstand ausgebrochen,
schwieg ich.

Ein schalter knipste jene nacht in meinem geist an.
Ich weiss nicht wie. Aber monate später
kann ich noch kruzifixe und wagenräder
hinter meinen augenlidern herumblinken sehen,
wenn ich liege und traumwärts treibe,
obwohl mit sinkendem kontrast.

Auch wurde ein schalter in Esmereldas geist
angeknipst, zum starken interesse und zur sorge,
in der nacht in der jener staub
ihre nase hinaufschoss wie ein salziger spülbeckensauger.
Esmerelda. Dünn wie ein lorbeerblatt.
Tarantelhaare. Dosenöffnerzähne.
Zieht gewöhnlich nur ganja aus ihrer gestrickten grastasche.
Eine hexe, von hexen geboren, 
als hexen wiedergeboren sagt sie, 
mit einem pelzballhuster namens Fizgig. “Es gibt 
eine art unruhigen geist in diesem haus,” sagte sie uns,
das haus das eigentlich ein verlassener kindergarten war,
ganz mit handabdrückchen an wänden, gemalten
affe pferd elefant giraffe,
plastischen stühlchen, bunten glitzernden papiernamen 
Walter Maria Gavin Olga Katie Peter,
gnomgrossen toilettchen.
“Ich kann jemanden hören, der vom tod
berührt wurde, dieses dauerhafte geschwafel
über einen kerl der einen herzanfall hatte.
Es ist am lautesten in meinem zimmer, ich kann dort
nicht mehr schlafen und muss meinen arsch zur anderen seite
des gebäudes bewegen.” Darüber spottete später
meine knüppelgezüngte freundin Rachel, “Scheisse!
Wenn sie eine hexe ist, bin ich dann Ho Chi Minh.
Es gibt nichts in jenem zimmer,” und tobte nach oben 
wie ein blondhaariger brückenlegepanzer. 

Minuten später schlich sie 
erschüttert und weiss wie ein winterszenenbriefbeschwerer 
zurück nach unten und flüsterte, “Ja, sie hat recht,
es gibt darin etwas.
Im moment in dem ich eintrat, füllte sich mein herz 
mit schmerz, mit’m gefühl 
dass etwas versuchte mich zu ersticken,
etwas mehr als ein bisschen fuchtiges.
Was immer darin ist, es ist verdammt nicht glücklich.”

The Path Meanders

The path meanders through the night.
The trees on every side all tower
to a moon-obscuring height,
bamboozling with their outstretched power.
No destination is in sight,
no flickering of a promised land,
and no-one’s here to flash some light
when all I need’s a helping hand.

The path meanders as I toil
deep through the wood, where canker mangles
every trunk into a boil
and, pointing in unnatural angles,
branches warp and twist and coil.
They’re sapped of life, sucked dry as sand
as mistletoe-clumps reap their spoils.
I’m lost and need a helping hand.

The path meanders. By degrees,
it disappears without a trace
as branches, flaking with disease,
sink down and smack me in the face.
The roots of these vindictive trees
jump out and trip me. I can’t stand.
For miles and miles I’m on my knees.
Still no-one comes to lend a hand.

The sun slides up. A cockerel crows.
In front of me there rolls a field
and then, a village packed with rows
of chimneys, where fresh meat is wheeled
across a square where pleasure flows
in language I don’t understand.
Could this be where my passion grows,
where somebody will lend a hand?

Ukrainian Flatmate, Part Two

they granted us a broom
and a brush
no dustpan

out into the corridor then,
a dead otter of dust
shish nyish chishichnyi chish nyishch!
the cleaning lady shnyiches
but what can I do?
no dustpan

here comes the Ukrainian boy
what’s that in his hand?
God be praised,
it’s a dustpan

into the corner of the kitchen then,
a molehill of dust
the days pass
a cowpat of dust
a glance in the cupboard
no dustpan

Misha, do you have one of these?
brush in hand
miming mimed dust
into a mimed dustpan

oh yes, yes, of course!
index finger at cupboard,
could you leave it there, please?
away goes the dust
a glance in the cupboard
no dustpan

new cowpat of dust
the days pass
bird’s nest of dust
the days pass
a glance in the cupboard
no dustpan

right, that’s it
toenail clippings
dead foot-skin
half my pubes
into the dust
he sweeps it all up
a glance in the cupboard
no dustpan

is it made of gold?
is it encrusted with diamonds?
does he kiss it tenderly
and call it Dusty?
oh darling Dusty,
I only want to be with you
no other man will ever touch you
or even look at you
is this what they call a pansexual?
stupid little prick, 
just give me the fucking dustpan

that’s it, I’m moving out
can’t stand this utter spaz
any longer
there’s a Turkish moustache of dust
he sweeps it in front of my door
I sweep it back
he sweeps it in front of my door again
a glance in the cupboard
no dustpan

suitcases packed
fridge emptied
notice given
bags out in the corridor
every last particle of dust
a swamp of dust
in front of his door
plus a couple of used teabags
every last hair off my arse
an old sock recently wanked in
and a note in Ukrainian, saying
“imbecile”

Jogging Round a Polish Park

And off we go, along the lane,
the roses bleeding, gushing red
across the left side of my brain
as terriers chase tennis balls
into a crashing, rippling pond.
What’s that? Some kind of avant-garde 
distorted Easter Island statue.
I wonder what inspired that.
Some pine trees with their trunks all knobbly.
Two girls, one pink, one mauve, on scooters.
Kneepad-clad, zigzagging skaters.
“Dobry.” Zigzag. Skate. “Dzien Dobry.”

Grey concrete drowns in orange, green,
cyan, maroon, magenta, yellow.
Hopscotch. Triple-scooped ice-cream
with flake. Two llamas. Alien spacecraft.
Signed Milena and Joana.

Could I, one hazy far-off day
and in a hope-fuelled, love-plump manner,
propel such innocent, sweet life,
young life ablaze with wide-eyed joy,
into this fake, demonic world?
Could I, one day, help mould a boy
into a man, as long ago
my fearless, knuckle-brandishing,
cavorting, lager-drenched non-father
never tried to do for me?

I’d plonk him in a dojo or
a boxing ring, I’d tie his gloves,
I’d tighten his each darkening belt,
I’d glaze him in a uniform,
though only for a year or two.
I’d nudge him manwards with a shove.
Such pride, such rushing pride I’d feel!
“Be tough, my son. This world is tough,
it’s full of lunging, squeezing scumbags,
oh my boy, don’t let them hurt you!”

Dear Christ, I don’t want British children,
sick demented nouveau-bourgeois
British children squealing, dribbling
on and on about their bulging,
radiating moral virtue,
never though displaying love,
authentic love for humankind
or lifting up a pinkie finger
to assist one single soul
except their rotten pampered selves,
their empathy a fleeting phantom.
If children come, God, make them Slavic.

But every eardrum-stabbing tantrum,
nappy-stench and sight of shit
reminds me, “No, I cannot do it.”

Turn left here, down the twiggy, barky,
helicopter seed-strewn dirt track.
Dusty molehills sprout in random
blobs of subterranean powder.
What do helicopters drop from,
sycamores? Not sure. Or maples?
Orbs of mistletoe and birds’ nests
jostle for branch-dominance
like billiard balls on leafy baize.
The mistletoe is shrivelling now though,
sagging like old ladies’ titties.
Tits are bickering with jays
as magpies flap and swoop and bluster,
bullying the fat woodpigeons.

Clang, clang! What sort of cutlery
can that be? Clang, thump, thump, clang, clang,
as three young men with time-defying
swords and wooden shields clang-thump 
each other with the subtlety
of lions plunging famished teeth
in zebra-meat. They’re clad in chain mail,
metal helmets, armour, shinpads,
shorts and luminous lime-green trainers.

An archipelago of pine cones,
daisies, cigarette-ends, beer cans
(Tyskie, Carlsberg, Lech) beneath
a candy-floss of emerald hedgehogs
on a mossy, spindly stick.
Then onward, through a cloud of midges
and a swamp of crashing leaves,
towards the bats’ and spirits’ realm.

Back onto concrete. Up it heaves
in cracking, bumpy, snaking ridges.
Underneath, the roots exhale,
they puff and pant, “You can’t defeat us!
Man, you cannot smother us
with your synthetic passageways!”
and crawl along the wrinkly surface,
ferrying refreshment to
these fortresses of oak and elm
across which wrens and sparrows chirrup.

Stone crosses. Lanterns, candles flicker
with their transcendental purpose.
Jesus with a radiating,
beaming heart. A headless cherub
kneels in stony solemn prayer
for Stanisław, Kasienka, Grzegorz, 
Małgorzata, Zbigniew.
Do their great-grandchildren still care?
Behind the plaques and holy virgins,
a vigilant hare outpaces me.

Puff, pant. Come on. Puff, pant. Come on,
we’re nearly there. First stopping point.
Lichen-sleeved and gnarly birches
bend like old men’s spines, contorting,
out of shape, a bit like me.
Come on, come on. Puff, pant. Keep going.

Now some godless graves. Black stars
on cubes on stumpy concrete pillars,
grey eternal anti-churches.
Battle sculpture, huge bouquet
that flutters in the morning breeze.
Cyrillic script. Can’t see the names.
Black marble obelisk, gold star.
Gepoy? Geroy! What’s a geroy?

There’s the wall. Caress the wall
and stop. Catch breath. Swig water. Wheeze.
Wipe sweat off head with t-shirt. Gasp.
My heart is thumping like a mallet.
Lean forward. Stretch those calves. And rest.
Left ankle up behind, now right.
That bush would make a decent toilet.
What’s this? A British cemetery!

Whole lines of murder. Private Simpson,
Royal Norfolk Regiment,
and Flight Lieutenant Clarke, a pilot!
Fusilier V. Rigby, died
aged twenty-five, of Lancashire.
Who were they, prisoners of war,
escape plans scuppered by a bullet?

Is this the same Lancastrian blood
as Fusilier Lee Rigby, died
aged twenty-five on Woolwich streets,
head hacked off by a sick jihadist?
Of all the fruitless, foolish feats
of humankind is war the saddest.
On and on and on it squashes.

And off we go again, uphill,
come on, Sir Edmund, to the peak,
past rows of skulls and vertebrae
that once were fearless Polish men,
were passion-bulging boys of only
twenty-one or twenty-two. 
God rest you, lads. Now find your way.
May those who made your parents lonely
rot in some fat bankers’ hell.

Now back out on the open green.
Aha! A dizzy loofah-tailed
noble nibbling ginger tree-rat
balanced on his red hind footlets
like an undernourished meerkat!
Little twitching sentinel,
what are you scouting for, my friend?
Away he darts, across the pathway
faster than a bourgeois liberal
choosing “racist” as an insult,
off he speeds, a Labrador
in hungry, thundering pursuit.
Who’ll win the race to that great oak?

Christ, that was close. The beast in red
was just a prostitute’s commute
away from being even redder.
Never mind, unlucky dog,
there’s always next time. Perseverance,
that’s what’s needed. Don’t give up,
however much this world of reptiles
tries to slice your soul to ribbons,
plots and schemes to stick Vivaldi
in a baseball cap and name-badge,
tries to trap Lord Byron in
a cage of slogan-screeching gibbons.

Up, up again, Sir Edmund, up
and onwards, past these orange berries,
immature redcurrants maybe,
across this flattened tree-stump crushed
to wooden shards, up, up and through
the rooty, stony, nettley grass.

Two other joggers, wrapped in lycra,
sporting flatter, healthier bellies.
“Dobry.” “Dobry”. Jog, pant. “Cheshch.”
Must try harder. Have to flush
this flab right down the gravy pipe,
these biceps have to bulge my flesh,
charge out like meaty regiments,
they have to smash and bash like bombs.

Four stone-faced, hammered, sickled, red
pallbearers prop a coffin up.
Poor Russia! Twenty-something million 
of their handsome people dead
in order to swat down four fifths
of all the Führer’s wound-up minions.
Hero! “Geroy” must mean “Hero”!
Damn it, all those geroys wound up
full of holes and underground.

Out on the field, young muscly husbands
clad in football shorts fling frisbees
at their dumpling-podgy children.
Mmm, pierogi, nice and crispy.
Rigging, speakers, microphones
and beer tents. Concert? Festival?

Ah, Mother Russia, frozen scapegoat,
slandered paper bogeyman,
heroic whistleblowers’ shelter,
Edward Snowden’s warm escape route,
European brother-country
flattening Islamofascists
while the bitterer-than-grapefruit
sneering traitors down in Brussels
shake their blood-drained, cum-stained fists,
oh, Russia! Feather-cushioned couch
of Dostoyevsky, Shostakovich,
Tereshkova and Gagarin,
where the drowsy brown bear nestles
waiting for his waking hour,
Russia! Hidden comrade, cousin,
fattest, maddest, easternmost
in our vast culture’s flail-armed jostles,
cradle of the Indo-Aryan,
vodka-powered dissident,
defiant rebel, master, self-boss,
victor from Sevastopol
to Vladivostok. Nowadays,
who here is the belligerent?
It isn’t you. Ah, Mother Russia,
could I, some decisive morning,
dare to dive into your icy,
caviar-strewn, drunken ocean?
Could I, some day, pitch a tent
upon your frozen, friendly surface?

Up and down a hairpin bend,
then over gravel to a playpark.
Sandpit, seesaw, roundabout,
crawling tube, horse on a spring.
A chessboard of square flower beds
in crimson, yellow, purple, white.
Fat bumblebees dive hither and thither.

Valda, cuddly, pretty Valda,
venturer to London Town
from up on the Daugava river,
I remember clear and bright
that day, while drinking honey beer,
a bumblebee drawn on its label.
“Seriously? It’s made of bees?”
Oh yes, I’d said, we grind them down
and turn them into Bumblebeer,
an ancient English recipe,
the English word ‘beer’ comes from ‘bee’.
Oh, bless you, sweet, curvaceous Valda.

That time you climbed a chair and screamed,
imploring me with shoe in hand
to turn into a mindless killer.
You almost had me battering
a guiltless little caterpillar
till I woke up from your spell
and ferried him to grassy safety.
I wonder what you’re doing now.

Oh, Slavic, Baltic beauties, tasty 
women of the Eastern plains,
can it be true, as I have heard,
that you are nothing like the soulless,
selfish sluts we have out West?
Can it be true you yearn for love,
that you possess both hearts and brains,
that you are human to your cores,
that passion boils behind your breasts?
Or are you power-hungry whores,
just money-snatching egoists
and pompous preaching hypocrites,
your hollow heads wedged up your arses
like our boring Western mingers?
I live in hope. I live in hope.
Without that hope, I’d slash my wrists.

Ah, here’s the amphitheatre,
a fan of grass-enfolded concrete
mixed with ferns and heliotropes
and patterned with old seat-supports
lined up like Soviet space invaders
gripped by, down the hill, a fist
of uncut grass and dandelions.
What would have boomed across that stage
beneath the clouds and isotopes
back in the booming, level-waged,
moustache-rich, radiation-kissed,
leviathan-cementing heyday?
The Cherry Orchard? Animal Farm?

And, zigzag down the sandy slope.
Nettles. Squirrels. Buttercups.
And, slalom round the molehilled hills
along the fort’s red-orange wall.
Its deep black eyes are peeping, tired
and cobwebbed, from the sullen earth.

Two old ladies, litter-picking?
Nordic walking, one with Pope
emblazoned on her well-milked chest,
well-milked from Catholic birth on birth.
John Paul the Second, obviously.
The cool Pope. Yeah, the groovy one.
What did you do for Africa
about the modern plague though, John?
If I was Pope I’d snort fat lines
and bring reincarnation back.
Who was that scholar, Origen?

I catch a fragment of their chat
that whistles past beneath the pines,
just one word comprehended: pshishwoshch.
Future. Sounds like pish. And hogwash.
The future is a load of pshishwoshch.
Take it with a laxative,
a shrodek pshechishchayahncy, as
the Poles would strangely choose to say.

And, stop. Caress the banister.
My legs are just about to give.
Wipe that pond of sweat away.
Gulp water like a dishwasher.
And stretch those muscles. Bend those knees.

A spiral staircase vanishes
in pulped and straggling shreds of trees
beneath the earth, just disappears
beneath a canopy of roots
and bulbs, down into soily nothing.
What was this place? A stammlager?

Keep going. Up the concrete steps.
Keep trudging forward. Pant, gasp, wheeze.

Away we go. Past wooden benches
with Ukrainian names carved in.
Dimitri loves Oksana. Well,
good luck with that. You’ll need it, mate.

The footpath cracks in fissures like
the palm of an octogenarian’s hand.
They widen into rippling trenches.
Grass and moss and life peek through.
Whole tribes of ants pour out and fidget.
Nature always wins, the land
is swallowed up, like in Pripyat
where car parks turn to bramble gardens,
swimming pools are haunts for wolves,
the ferris wheel’s harangued by fir trees.
Beep, beep, beep. Don’t eat the apples.

Wow, what’s that? A furry midget
scurrying across the lawn!
A ferret? Or is it a polecat?
Ha ha! Polecat! Polish polecat!
Zbigniew Polkatskowicz.

Will these people ever heal?
Will they one day forget the bruise
of German rifles, Russian tanks,
Ukrainian pointed bayonets?
Of Chamberlain’s imaginary
helping hand, his hollow threats
that couldn’t frighten off a goose,
not when you’re just a paper lion,
not when you’re a unicorn,
a sickly withered senile badger
yelping, hissing weasel words.

But Hitler didn’t lose the war.
The Europeans lost the war.
The German and the British people.
Mere dispensable toy soldiers.
The French, Italians, Poles and Russians,
all of them – deceived, deceived,
led off to pointless slaughter by
the power-grasping powers that be.
Slaughtered to remake the world.
Brother nations. Sister cultures.

Nearly there. I’m almost there.
Speed up, speed up, just one last burst,
as fast as you can run, come on!
Around the corner. Mind the snail.
Pump that muscle, kill that beer-flab!
There’s the line. Caress the line.
And rest. And rest. And rest. Exhale.