"I sway drunk and liberated from the tin green tank-top spouting my bright brand of Nevesky's Napoleanic 'Liberte!' Yesterday, I ran away from poverty to fame, a circle clipped... by lies, by bliss... 5 Brezhnev signing in my subway bill after a solid round of boilermakers toasting his longevity! Such dull, glum rounds. Am I the hero of my nation-state? Giving parliament a kiss and a whistle for their censure of my too solemn unsolemness. Soldiers fawn and come to humble silence 10 when I spill the beans about the independence we've won from ourselves. Who needs psychoanalysis now? They smile and cheer in black, ironic, loving, loved street-jeers; good ethnic-russian boys to the riven core! I weep with bilged courage into hot salt hands 15 when I declare The Coup a Coup Decapitat... those guys couldn't hang a cat! The bear dances mincing on its paws. The gilded, false shuffle of our flighty republic's shifted once again. At my slipping, bootblacked foot some Mother Russia holds her infant up to the AKs ricochet. 20 What will Yevetshenko think up to rhyme with this? A cab-man in his busted cab crammed with madcaps putters by and sings: 'Puling Pavlov, Pugo and Yazov--- manhood's appalled... 70 bleak years of the Commies' trawling haul...!' "
From the collection "Contemporaries"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.