Something childlike deep within their eyes, reminded me

of faces in the crowd from before the fall of the Berlin Wall;

or on dim-lit streets in Gorbachev’s Moscow—

a cold, heartless, place—queuing for half-loaves

of old, white bread, where prostitutes hung on every corner—



a new breed of parrot combing for sugardaddys with Texas oil

money intent on buying the entire state of Kazakhstan,

rocks and all; or in cheap, quadratic Soviet hotels,

like The New Hotel Cosmos, it’s heavy, acrylic telephone

ringing off the hook all night: ‘You need Russian happy massage?’,



‘You wanna happy wife?’, ‘You happy married man

wanna be more happy?’— happy pronounced with a ‘Ch’,

like chutzpah, just without the Rabbi—a means to a bitter end.

Freezing, they held their banners high so you could read them

loud and clear, even without your rose-tinted spectacles,



but you and smiled weakly, shrugged, sipped coffee, ate cake,

warm on the inside, contemplating the end of the known world,

and how you might survive another week, let alone

another bloody election.  Some had long departed, slipped inside

their shells, or grabbed whatever was at hand—a tin can,



an old boot—just like hermit crabs, scrambling; the faithless,

hoping for swift insurance claims, burned their homes down

to ashes—mislaid cigarette butts in curious places; but cement and sand

and bricks and raised hands were stuck—piled deep, under

Shanghai containers, full of plastic trucks and fluffy bears

 

and copyright problems with blinking lights and batteries,

lining the Port of Rotterdam.  

In age-old institutions, staff

simply frowned, grimaced or drowned, and somehow life

went on: birds migrated, snow fell, winds howled,

seas spawned silver fish.  Weeks later you were still stuffing



your face with cake, scanning the horizon for Santa Claus and

his reindeer, shook parcels under the Christmas tree

six weeks early and crossed your fingers behind your back,

hoping the Russians were coming with borscht and furry hats

with ear flaps—just like once the Berliners had hoped—



after Adolf and Eva and Blondi the dog, lay in dust

and shrapnel at the bottom of a hermetically sealed bunker.  

Bet you wish you had one now, eh?  

Hundreds, thousands,

lost their stride, slowly their living, their spouse, their minds,

glued to TV every night  at seven o’clock sharp, praying



for a faint crack of light, but every night you cooked

the same reconstituted meat—a kind of SPAM—over and over again:

boiled, stewed, fried, roasted, diced, mashed; 
(the indigestion didn’t bother you, you had your cake)

followed by game shows and studies of sheep herding



in the highlands. In the end, you didn’t even add pepper or salt,

and so, they took to the streets, vowed in solidarity to stand

in front of your house every Saturday morning, just when

you were waking up, drying yourself off in the shower.

Some say there are those who weather the storm



in distant lands, rubbing their palms, sipping cocktails

under big, wide umbrellas on island havens where dictators

practice a magical form of democracy, where accounts are numbered

and things are implied, rather than stated.  

Who knows?



How many days did it take Moses to reach the Promised Land?