4685. COME, RASPUTIN, COME

COME, RASPUTIN, COME

Now the periwinkles have faded, the last blue light

is in the sky, and everything before me is passing quickly.

Overcharged at a movie show  -  bad print, jumping film,

projectionist drunk in his hole. More like the wild west is this

than any Trans-Siberian Railroad ever dreamed up. They've

put the dogs in the cattle cars and now all the best seats have

cattle in them; braying, mooing, lowing bovines. Let the lights

flicker, I don't care any longer. Somehow my Austrian cigarette

is burning from the middle out. I'll pay you in Euros at the border.

-

I remember Helmut Schmidt when he lived here. I once walked

to the chemist with Ranier Fassbinder too. It was like nothing at

all, except that we were pushing his car  -  Lada, Volga, something

like that. He said he 'knew it only worked on Tuesday, Thursday

and Friday' but that he would take a chance. Nonetheless, it failed. 
So eastern was all that  -  the tired men, the fat girls, 
and Novaya Minsk too.

-

The young girl from Amsterdam is skating down the stairs, her

iceskates on her ears. She is fast, and does anything for money.

High on the avenue's window, I saw her once, looking down onto

the reddish night. So pleasing, so pleasant, the sight. I forget the

name of the street, but it meant 'Butterfly' or something like that.

-

I can go home with nothing in my pockets and you in my hands.

Or  -  I suppose  -  I can just as easily go home with my pockets 
full and my hands barren of you. Thomas Wolfe, in America, said, 
'You can't go home again.' I guess I beg to differ; I have
 two distinct ways of going. Or maybe he just meant you 
can only do it once, and not again.