By Aleksey Calvin

With a wild cat's face

Summer shouts on the corner

You smile at the smell of her

Dirty socks.

You'd go out and give'er a kiss...

If you were a little older!

A poet is a warrior; Why not?!

 

The sky is black and blue -

A civil war -

But, really, playing with itself

Like two dogs fighting for a toy

Over a seated audience of homes

Awaiting a concerto.

But the dancing cloud-swirls merely shift:

A dada light-show coloring the world.

A poet is a warrior; Why not?!

 

The dreamy-drunkard crawls

Few feet away from bed

Then strikes another lonely pose:

His naked limbs'o'entrails neatly overgrown

With paisley patterns of fresh moss.

Rude tiny flowers sprout and wither, instantly,

From pores of every meowing bruise...

But from the mouth, timed to rhyme, flows time:

Sublime-most music screaming

That, as quickly, stops.

A poet is a warrior; Why not?!

 

Up on the wall the teenage cards of poets

Give way to a mosaic-ful of tiny HD screens,

All housing faces of a twin or else a lover,

So-quickly aging, then un-aging,

In the distance of inviting alien play,

And every mouth would speak a single secret word

That only you can understand....

It is a mirror, you would one night see,

And just as soon the sighing faces will melt into

One single death-mask fit for you alone,

With stranger features, all just yours,

Forever streaming, trading, youth and rot...

With weary fingers try and try to brush the mask away...

A poet is a warrior; Why not?!

 

But it is not yet time, you see?!

Here giggles timelessness in robes of green,

Just for a glimpse!

But days are scavenging, bewildered spiders.
Can't count their brilliant glassy eyes!

Can't count... When fleeting spiderlegs caress

The crusted yearning of your lilac thoughts,

That, growing ghostly limbs,

And then the beastly zen-face of a nun,

Would wrestle one more pretty face – a twin? -

Would wrestle just to lose,

To lose... Toulouse, you disappear, kindly!

And Bob Picasso's a sharp dandy,

Now in his basement modern colors flash and rot,

Another death mask's mirror for the world.

Who has the key? Who has the map?

I'll take them.

For I might sketch it one bright day

With happy blood of mystic tete'a'tetes, betrayals...

And thus I would re

-

spin the dreidel of the world.

 

A poet is a warrior: Why not?!

 

A lemon tree above phantasmal neon flowers

Painted on the fence...

A mournful hound who peers

Across the Gulf of Finland in my eyes

From out a battered copper bottlecap,

A monument to peace long left behind...

A dusty fire-extinguisher who sits so tall

Atop the bull-back of a garden table...

The fallen branches twined, wind-shivered leafs,

The hollow clover carton, end of world,

The rusted bike-racks, end of world,

An end, a world... and then one sees the soccer ball!

Oh, soccer ball!

One day I'll kick you madly

Through the fog! And you will soar,

Oh, yes, you'll soar, sly soccer ball!

Oh, wily harpy of my boyhood, through the fog!

A poet is a warrior; Why not?!

 

Lo, ancient gaslight lantern

O. gentle Mary-candle!

My shadow-twin and I shall carry you,

If you would have us,

Into the 22nd century's happy hades!

Into that world of metal fables

That will be misting darkly from the crying cave-rocks...

And every single step would let us...

Oh, at last! At last!

Forget the smug and witty mugs of Plato, Blake, Chateaubriand,

Of Gertrude Stein still crawling on four fingers

Through a battlefield of right and wrong...

Sweet plenty's massive spider,

How could we ever count your pretty glassy eyes

That make us yearn with wormy tips of

Our most sensuous and swarthy entrails

To find the nearest shopping block?!

So, who's to say that we, why, even we

With nearly inkless fountain pens

Won't, at the end of day,

Turn round and sever every useless snake-charmed stalk

Of ours... Of yours...

And end the world... And end the world...

A poet is a warrior; Why not?!