To Anna Ivanovna with the Red Flag
In The West
The Wayward Sisters –
Jana, The Ripper, and Evergreen
All Three:
The three of us –
the world enchanted!
Incanted all spells,
licenses granted,
slanted and scolded
all and sundry
like thunder.
Of evil we’ve done
a sum and a wonder,
a dam erected –
just us elected,
became the idols
of the masses,
into dolts and asses
turned them, rejected.
Our souls we’ve sold
for gold and praise,
to gaze upon the world now,
through which primeval evils blaze,
by us created and directed,
rejected by none,
for they love fame and wealth
more than their mother
or brother,
and would rather the world end
then the slightest hardship suffer,
but spend the stock of the earth
on themselves,
and roll and rock
until they fall from Grace
but would never
praise the God
we sever
from them
forever and ever.
We are the Madams and Ladies First!
Our word is last and final!
In thirst for blood and gore
we blast resistance to dust
and turn everyone’s spinal cord
to rust
and pulp,
and burn continents
and states
in one gulp
of unsatiable need
that stunts mercy
and frees the greed.
Need we say
that we may
and do
flaunt our prestige and rule
for every fool to queue before us
for the permission to live and act.
The very fact of us on the top,
making the rabble bend the knee,
is a stop to goodness and sense,
whence no love may commence
but death and darkness,
cold and dense.
We speak for all
and lie abroad,
declare the dead worth our joys,
profit from each ploy we birth,
while we toy with lives and souls
that our decrees end and doom,
as disgrace tumbles and rolls,
and our glee fumbles
and rends
the tissue parched
of the world’s womb.
…
Jana –
The First Sister:
Defunct afresh,
my soul junked,
I trash in convulsions
in the cauldron dunked.
By the coven lead,
the Ukraine and Europe,
and the world is bled,
for Serbia, and Russia entire,
in fire and dread and spell
must be offered
and die
so that,
buffered
from hell,
rest
may I.
Indispensable I am,
a sham truly,
but to all a lamb,
a product’s product,
I abduct and obstruct,
and beget
new lawyers,
to get God’s eyes
blurred
that I was
the force for good
in the world.
A knoll I hear,
distant and sad,
for the dead slaves,
while the knaves are fed
their blood and tears,
with no fears of judgment
or jeers,
for,
to celebrate me
it all appears.
I only cry and remorse feel,
mummified,
hardened as steel,
for all the riches
I coveted, acquired,
that warm me not
as I rot,
putrid and foul,
in flames untired.
…
The Ripper –
The Second Sister:
I hold the purse.
I nurse the grudge.
For a lover’s
verse
I’ve sold lies.
I judge
who may live or die.
I fly high
and hover
over the future
of kids and nations,
deciding whose face
to cover by the mold,
or free to respire,
their dear to hold,
whose patients
will expire and
to a morgue be rolled,
or grant them rations
to see the light,
and for whom
so cold
will be the night.
I say We
but I mean I,
for I say Nay
that you may die
of hunger
if I whim it so,
or if anger comes to
my iron fist
in a Gucci glove,
which my mask matches,
and even the stain
from the virtuous blood
shed for my gain.
I love
ice cream,
as dear as sin.
And gin, too,
deep in the bin.
My fridge alone
would enrage
the public
whose average wage
is twice its price.
The myrrh and spice
of my fife,
the Republic,
is to bully and mock
the fully aware
the laughingstock
they are.
I am the Tsar,
and they –
the spare parts.
The arts
of the Dominion
provide
the hearts and bellies
I need
all elections
to lead.
My opinion,
the order, indeed,
is
to cede and desist
and concede all to ME
with my smile so fake.
Let them eat cake,
my last words shall be
to the hungry smellies
at a charity bake.
…
Evergreen –
The Third Sister:
Supreme I am,
as vast as a conspiracy,
the cream of the cream,
the jam from the chalice
of the nasty
and the malice.
The head I am
of global piracy,
the horned one
of the coven,
my foot is cloven.
My words are chaste,
my actions crush
and drum and slam
all who don’t in haste
rush
to be my donor
and kiss and honor
my foot so callused.
I fit in no palace,
for I’m
so grand
and awesome
to a man
and
a mouse.
No house
is white enough
to lighten the dark
in my eager
bosom.
No praise can restore
or hark the vigor
into my wilted
limbs.
I’m triggered
easy,
and am sore,
I revenge avow,
if no one is there
to flatter.
Tiresome minions
scatter
before me
but must bow
and vow,
and cater
to all my whims.
You, peasants,
slaves,
and fools,
my tools
you are,
my toast and feed,
for sure as my creed,
my breed’s
exalted.
I eclipse you!
I love them fresh or canned,
the dreams
of the children,
in their tears
fried –
I came, I saw, they died!
Salted or bland,
as I stand
above all,
my lips are fed
by the hand
of the Devil.
I revel,
surrendered
to Lilith,
becoming elite.
She makes me
her thrall,
granting me power,
ousting my soul.
All Three Sisters:
We rule you and fool you!
None can escape!
Or scrape a living.
No almsgiving permitted!
Masses dim-witted!
Surender and serve!
From the path
don’t swerve
of our wrath!
Adore us,
don’t bore us,
and love
the bondage!
Work,
or
don’t work,
earn and
pay taxes,
or rot
on welfare,
burn from the frost
or
sleep in a square.
Not that it matters!
We lurk for work,
hunting the donors,
fight tooth and nail,
command the axes
funds to curtail,
or honors
to bestow.
The rabble and the mob,
that we so awe,
for us will beat down
a scholar, a snob,
shaping our order
by public disorder.
Chaos controlled,
and brains not clever
shall keep the chains
and all in the mould,
in which the yearning
for freedom will throb
but wither and fold
forever and ever.
…
In The East
The Babushka –
Anna Ivanovna:
In this absence of angels,
while hatred around us thrives,
by faith, I shall be kept.
When for the wasted lives
all the true mothers have wept,
when our starved bodies
rave,
when a wave of anguish
after a wave
cuts deeper than a knife,
and when the demons
their plunder crave –
I shall be brave!
From their graves
vampires rise
and are bleeding the quick for life…
Thick ropes are held by our hangmen…
Poisonings, faithlessness – rife…
I must raise the glory
from the dust,
and abide by the pain
I must,
to keep the courage,
and the luck of the victors,
and the convictions I can trust.
Evil I must not fear,
I must not ever fail,
even when pains
my body sear,
or,
when
with a folded tail
I wish
to disappear.
To abide by the oath I must,
spare not a single foe,
never withdraw,
only bestow the ancient awe,
and saw the seeds of Freedom
in the wild,
proclaim the saving of each child
a duty
more sacred than all!
And thus –
beyond all sham or a fuss,
I shall be saved by my duty!
…
But…
When I look around…
So many shrouds…
…
My handkerchiefs are clouds,
by doubts drenched,
in yearning for a drought rich,
the ones which wept all summer,
and like the drummer of death
drummed and announced
enormous amounts,
heaps,
and multiple counts
of disenchantments and pains,
reigns of evil witches,
lame dwarfs,
and rabid bitches,
vengeful crones,
and hungry hyenas,
which fight for bones
and the rotten flesh
with vultures,
until they smash and scatter,
as if nothing should
matter,
in a burst of madness.
A desperate cry of ultimate sadness
a question sends,
which cuts at the very root,
and yearns like a poisoned dart,
and lends a touch of challenge
to a fugitive’s injured foot
and a brother’s broken heart –
Are life, or love, or existence
worth the strain of persistence?
But – look!
Our soldiers come!
It took them long
but
our souls now hum
the Savior’s song!
Into Freedom
I burst,
elated,
waving the flag
of old,
rolled up too long,
which my thirst,
craving,
so strong,
so vast,
it has, at last,
sated.
They talk my talk!
Oh, how sweet
is my mother tongue!
To greet them
I briskly walk,
renewed and young.
I know
soldiers are
ravenous, fatigued,
and grieving.
But –
they
their food
to me
are giving?!
No, that fare, scarce,
I pined for steady,
hungry and scared,
praying for life,
you must,
dearest child,
for yourself
keep ready.
What say you?!
Don’t dirty the tongue!
Don’t blaspheme
and
by the smelly dung
and mud
sully
my ears.
My blood boils
and my joy spoils!
A gully erupts
between us.
Blood and gore
I see,
and poisoned fruits!
Peers no more
we are!
Spears and flames
that char,
kill the names,
Holy and Sacred,
of our Roots!
Food?
From your hands?!
You!
Bands of
traitors
and killers,
slaves of dictators
and our Hell’s pillars!
I won’t! I won’t!
And!
Don’t trample
and soil
that symbol,
that temple!
Before it,
around it,
ample, ripe
Evil
beat a retrieval
and recoiled!
Under that flag
my parents fought,
the fortune
of your life securing!
But your heart,
with rancor fraught,
Evil,
by hatred of me,
is luring.
Don’t be entrapped!
Your soul raped,
eternal life scrapped
for you
by the hate
packaged
in sugar
by the vulgar crones
who send you the drones
and cheer you on
to be forever
condemned and gone!
Hear my husband’s
desperate warning,
and his pleas sent:
With your glee,
and your dark arts,
don’t invite
Devils
into our hearts
rent by
endless mourning!
Weak are my hands,
Robust, your feet.
Hunger my stomach
expands
but dignity
my death demands!
Your anger
all your grace
will eat,
but never it will
my virtue beat!
Oh, beasts sated,
soulless shells
of true ethics sold!
Loyalty is never debated!
Love has no price in gold!
Grief oppresses.
Hate abounds.
On the trail of peace
no caresses
but packs
of war hounds.
Humankind’s turned
into a bog,
a swamp,
plunged into a fog.
Madmen may fake it
that they are clever,
that the blood
they drank
turns them into sages,
but never shall mud,
Hear, thee!,
be equal to a bud,
and the pages
of life
pure shall be –
Forever and ever
and
into the ages of ages!
Go!
Depart!
For my heart
is ill.
The already dead
from sorrow
raw
you don’t have
to torture
or kill.
Višeslav Simić, Ph.D.
México
Victory Day – May 9, 2022
