Boiler

The overzealousness to flaneur
Got me stuck in a different karma
First with a whizzing plumber
Then with a whizzing electrician
Whom the plumber recommended
Almost made me believe
That skilled trade
Is the prerogative of septuagenarians
In these eastern parts
They pant and I pin down
My conscience
Dunno whether to lend a hand
Some inchoate indignation
Won't let me
The whizzing electrician
Red and varicose
Knows all about boilers
Indeed more than the plumber
It can be like that with work–related hobbies
Yet he's reluctant to believe
In solar panels, for instance
Intoning arcane operational details
In palsied grandfatherly dialect
About safety valves
In 'hydronic systems'
He asks me about the vessel itself
I make a slip of tongue and say
'It's old'
I regret it instantly
The thermostat is fine
But the inner coil burned down
Definitely
His surface tension
His surface verdict


Ms. D

The black hair is burning
Redyellow on her freckled shoulders
She's hardly mythological
With those fiery end strands
Aglow like the spiraling motes
Within a pillar of limelight
Chiaroscuro by the bar
She's 2o'clocking an Italian Samson
& his posse comitatus
Brandishing a collective
Ciao&ndash:bella with wraparound shades
She has obviously seen them before
But this time
There won't be any pillars falling
Nor any manes shorn in a delicate lap
This time
It's strictly business


This Early Sunny April

A railway bridge is
Going rat–atat hingefully
As bicycle chains are
Whirring indistinguishably
From dragonflies
Past those who go slow
About their day
Along the river
That is already
Foretasting the mossy
Fuel–stained bottoms
Of boats for leisure

A tiger–striped dog takes
A brisk shit
On the paved promenade
And a ruddy tourist
While succulently biting on
His chicken wings
Is voraciously pronouncing
'Crisp' with two 'r's
To his tourist wife
On a parasoled boat–terrace
As she smacks her pursed lips
While loudly cutting the word
'Connection' in half
All to the brassy sounds
Of a youthful orchestra
In crisp white
Dress shirts and gowns
An earshot away
This early sunny April


Mug

Railed catacombs
With steel messengers
From nineteen–forty–east
Marqued and orphaned
Rendering deliverance
A thing of minutes
A funeral procession
Of individuality
In the nipping must
Of afterhours–underground
A fat and beaten thumb
Checking the pulse
Of a bulging, threadbare
Insulation pocket
Near the sliding red
Door with a sticker
Saying 'Revolution'
And a button
Next station
Is


Returning Glory

For Vratislav Brabenec

An old bloodhound, askew his broken nose
With Lennonized bespectacled a mien
He's slow and bent and fragile in repose
What value could deep wrinkles glean?

His gait is vagrant, un-possessive, torn
From shabby tweed protrudes the cannabis
On cream-white shirt, to shroud a languid morn
And flounder on the brim of personal abyss

His dallied spittle rips through drunken veil
Of sour wine, diluting angst of sixties' red
Nostalgic for his ghosts, he promises to hail
His sunken heroes beneath their flowerbed

He mentions Buber, then an obscure man
An alto-sax from little knolls of Terezín
'Quartet, quintet, there was a band. . .'
Gruff voice escapes through heavy-bearded grin

He speaks of friends, in tales, to tell another one ahead
Of kitchen-talks and Latin, Hebrew, Greek, his jazzy craft
The exile of theology; the arts and artist's bread
About the last who cried, the last who laughed

In native language, his last name rhymes with 'ant'
The little ant with freights of varied inspiration
That did not hesitate unload and share a pant
In snippy lilts and overblows, with scourged a generation

Deep wrinkles gleaned what now is visible to others
His sense of humour, a golden thread of pain adorns
Complacent elder's face &ndash he says he rarely worries, bothers
How long, nevertheless, and far he lost himself, to be again
Reborn?

Ekleksographia:
Wave Two

March, 2010

Poetry

Iliya Bolotyansky

Iliya Bolotyansky

Iliya Bolotyansky (Ansky) (b. 1983) is a poet of Russian–Jewish descent. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming (as Iliya Ansky), in Anemone Sidecar, Contemporary & Literary Horizons (with translations of his poetry to Romanian), Cantaraville and GRASP.