Alex is a new poet for us. The folowing works are from a chap book that he produced in limited editions. He has this to say about himself. "I was born in Moscow and raised in San Francisco, where I reside to this day. I spent my formative years working as a nightclub and fashion show promoter/producer and have since gone on to start an independent publishing company which will release its first title in the fall. My writing celebrates the dreams of the anonymous people who enter my life."
We cast away our sweat soaked sheets
And wander naked in the streets
Where the flesh of our muses
Is sold by the pound
And the barkers midnight call
Rings with reason in our ears
All to eager to see our names in lights
We lick hot leather from their boots
With swollen tounges we cower in the night
Exposed beside our withered roots.
Dead Cities- A Prophecy In Dead Cites we will be aquainted...in
San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York,
London, Paris, Amsterdam, Cairo, Bagdad,
Tel Aviv...We will sleep like mantises
beneath abandond pyramids...We
will dance in the blasted fields where sunflowers
refuse to grow...We will extract fluids
from one another...we will amalgamate
our memories in glowing coals...We will
entertain terrorism...We will spend days
in seculsion...We will assune new names
...We will embrace the architedcture of
attrtion...We will seek satori in azure
implosions...We will adopt the language of
subways...We will investigate fissures...
We will fuck like addders...We will argue in
cheap motels...We will interpret the
Death notices...We will anticipate catacslysms...
We will a reduce Shakespeare to equations...
We will brush fish scales from our feet...We will
laugh with the conviction of surgeons....We will
misplace furniture inside gaping wounds...
We will question the authenticity of woodcuts...
We will elude complacency inside our
mutant trenches.
In Dead Cites we are implored to think
Different by limitless billboards, imposing like
shadows in an empty room.
In the opaque confines of Langley porter, I
offered you to the wretches over stale crumb-
cakes and curdled milk. You and other
Summer ghosts. Remember sparky's with
Brazilian Eddy? China Beach the following morning?
Our fevered symphoney of razors?
The breakers crashing bellow? Runny noses?
Ruddy knuckles? Soiled fingernails? Your
breasts were prominent, i assured them, your
arms unsavaged, your azure eyes incestant in
their sockets. In Haldol oblivion I tore
them from a newspaper and placed them
over my own. I stared long and hard at the
wretches with your charecteristic disengagement,
and demanded that they turn over
your lips and nose...The new appendages
were disproportionate. I was reluctant to part
with them...One by one, te wretches
usurped your features like Harliquins. In
the end, I assigned them to a limber boy
of convused mind, hardly 18 years of age.
II In the vapid serenity of the cafeteria, I
offered you the wretches over grit and
gristle...Remember 16th and Harrison?
The DNA lounge? I was running out
of memories, yet I recounted the night you
entered my life with alacrity. Do you recall
our initial conversation? As jejune as it was?
"Where did you get that backpack?"
"New York."
The Wretches found this significant. More so
than our final encounter, which we no longer
discuss. Perhaps the heavy doses of medication
limited their capacity for imagaination,
preventing them from accepting your for the
effigy you've become. They refuse to concieve
your shriveled breasts, your fetid
breath, your skin, slowly unraveling,
crawling with eczema. They have grown
accustomed to falling in love with you,
over and over with each conversation.
In the flourescent hallways, I offered the last
of you to the wretches...No thing else
would appease them...I beg you to forgive me
for the late night telephone calls, for the
unwanted letters, for the unexpected visitors.
The are dying to see you. And I too am
dying to see you, O beloved corpse.