Philip Nikolayev Biography

The   user   interface   has   the  following   format.   Upon   accessing   the   URL,
the   user   sees   a   welcome  message   with   some   explanation   of   the  service
provided. The  user is  prompted to  enter  his or  her name, date of birth,
When  everything  else  fails,  try  something  new. and email address,
For instance, try the central mental hospital, then  to  left  click  on  the
sit back and mumble enjoying the  belle  vue   submit  button.  Based  on
until  the  nurse  has counted you all. this  information,  the  CGI  script
Our group files  in  fresh  from  the  courtyard walk,  generates "on  the
a  pageant  of  male  flesh  in  ugly  dress.  fly"  an  appropriate  horoscope
There's bundles of  excitement  but  little talk. reading  for  the  end  user,
The  chess-players  are  breaking  out  their  chess. or  displays  the  logs
No  one  to  mention  the  Afghan  War.  The  state, and  user  Statistics if
crumbling, buys me my sparse and forkless lunch. the  current  user  is
This  latest  novel  fails  to  kill  my worries,  the  site admin.  Parse  CGI
The  Plexiglas  window  withstands  a  teenage  a  punch.  variables  (or
God,  I  must  prove  completely  nuts,  by  fate  lookup  logged  record) to
unfit for active military service. obtain user's birthday. Parse user's
stats, verify and save to log file. Compute user's Zodiac sign based on
birth date. Print personalized greeting. Generate a horoscope reading and
send it to user's browser} else if (user == administrator) {compute stats.
...

Time to recount the sparrows of the air.
Seated alone on an elected stair,
I stare as they appear and disappear.

Tonight the deck supports tremendous quiet,
although the twilight is itself a riot.
I'm glad I'm staying here, not at the Hyatt.

My pen, eye, notes, watch, whiskey glass and hell
all hang together comfortably well.
Pain is my favorite resort hotel
...

I.

I am a man. I've lived alone. I've been in love. I've played with
fire, cursed the telephone, and basked in verse, in verve, and also
Humid, terrestrial, mixed, nongenderspecific, have occasionally
day's tumult ushers in an evening with a lone moved a woman's
shut icecream stand, false promises of cone heart, although I also,
and scoop near Central Park. Juneific famously, had such an awk-
are the silhouettes of people dreaming by, ward start. Amazed at
lips, lit cigarette tips, thoughts and tulips streaming by how much
along dimly hospitable park lamps toward eleven symmetry a life
with an occasional rev of internal combustion can still support, I
wafted across from nearabouts. stare in rapt near-idiocy, like a
"What's this you are talking about, Sarah?" foreign passport, and
you hear a voice, and the reply, "I'm sorry. April's Persian lilacs
but what was I supposed to do?" Two bats all bloom straight into
dash through a silver stretch of atmosphere. my face, and various
What she was supposed to do we never hear, other blossom, too,
depending on each case, while you are softly tangible, while you
are sweetly mine. We're existentially wise, we're mortally divine.



II.

All whispers know where whispers go and lusters where with
lusters flow, and when your palm is in my palm, just as my poem
There is a sparkling tone to how you speak, is in your poem, look
a quickness to your whisper, an implied at this stellar, cellular,
correctness in your ironies. We stride organic life of mine, the
along emphatic benches in the weak general and particular, the
light bristling eloquent dark. Pine, elm and oak gross (as well as
fall silent now to hear you tell a joke— fine) intentions I epitomize.
something about a man and a mandrake; Look, seeing through its
I think it cute and laugh like Captain Drake. thin disguise the bleary
We then explore the vagaries of light sky whose weepy eyes have
found underfoot by lamps, and kiss. "Beatrix, rained us a surprise.
will you still need me when I'm thirty-six?' A lightning bolt's
You favorably mumble that you might, protruding hand snatched
and throw a willing arm around my nape. past us, far and brief and
I reassure you that there's no escape. as I hold you in my arms, you
fill me with belief. Don't wonder if and how, much stranger than
right now, the hyacinth of sorrow may blossom forth tomorrow.



III.


The stars in liquid decadence reclaim their lost positions, all
knotty dispositions dissolved in limpid dance. They offer us their
Another couple floats up through thickened ink stardom. Oh, we
into the field of vision, to redissolve could sympathize with them,
leaving a thin trail of perfume and love but instead, we set eyes
and visual recollection in the pink. with them upon that higher
Cicadas cataract from tree to tree. tsardom, that real of love and
A mock nightingale trills, then two, then three. reason. Our lengthy
We cut short across grass and leaves (then four), cigarettes crackle
encountering no one on our slight detour with dry regrets during
where, negligibly burdened with a sixpack, the rainy season, but
a master and his bulldog rustle on, we ignore their humors, their
a small red light fixed to her furry back. melancholy murmurs,
We are too busy with our love to see them. decline ascetic rigors,
Tomorrow we'll be going back to Boston. welcome straight facts,
Three cheers for Central Park at height of season. clear figures,
where laws concerning numbers come plumed with midnight
sounds, and spirits stir from slumbers like angels out of clouds.
...

Talking like Pushkin to his horse, I climb
into thick equestrian aesthetics. I'm
horseman and veterinarian in one
on an estate of troubled youth, I am
an aristocratic fop, hello,
galloping at full gallop shooting at treetops,
yahoo to you Sir in treble multiplication,
I know about stallions and I'm
out of here to the city soon, I must meet
N. or K., I forget which, and then the zisters C.
Sorry, I mean the sisters Z.
My sideburns incinerate the furniture in the salon
of Y. I do not care
for C++ , for I live in the nineteenth century.
I barely lived through math at the Lycée.
I'm now dans une boutique.
Vous ne parlez pas français? Merde, vous êtes alors
crétin, mon vieux monsieur le barbecue!
What are you a Volga Tatar or something?
Actually I've never been to Kazan but I wanna go
some day, maybe when the emperor exiles me.
You look familiar, I know you from somewhere.
So what brings you to St. Petersburg on
this particular twist of the century?
Lozenges of the imagination climb
reflected in the Neva of the sky
and in the sky of the Neva and farther
along the Nevkas, and the stars, the stars
shine viscerally like old duel scars
anticipated. I am stuck at home.
I'll never see you, Paris, London, Rome.
Adrenal memory flows and gels and burns,
acting in combination with my sideburns.
I'll show you some transculture. Gospoda,
do you understand any Russian, ah?
Nyet? Damn, then I must speak to you in English.
...

I've long had what Soviet psychiatrists
called "a tendency toward vagrancy."
At four I would run away from home
repeatedly for a whole day, alone
or sometimes with a friend named Boris
of like age. Knew full well we "just can't do this,"
but nudge for nudge and wink for wink,
we'd board the trolleybus #10, I think,
buy tickets at four kopeks each
from our gleanings and savings of the week,
stick them into the ticket punch on the wall,
watch the chad fall as you pulled,
and ride all across Kishinev in half an hour
to get off near that unforgettable restaurant
built in the likeness of a huge wine barrel.
We peered inside, it was cool.

Then we had options:
go and splash in the local artificial lake
(I couldn't swim yet),
wonder in between along the banks,
catching frogs to take home in a glass jar
to populate a small construction pond (why
did we always use my shirt to do this?),
or go and explore the local flea market,
which was not at all safe to do,
but even at four it's nice to have options.
(One guy sold what we thought was a gun,
we asked him and he confirmed it.)

Those were days of cholera epidemics
in Moldova. We'd buy peasant-cooked
fodder corn on the cob when we got hungry,
haggled with old ladies over pennies.
We wouldn't catch the return trolley until sunset.
Then it's always the same picture:
the wicket creaks open, the landlord's mutant
barks through froth, my wet shirt clings.
I step out of the dark
toward my mother waiting by the door
of our "temporary house" on Kaluga Street,
which was a bit of a dirt road, probably still is.
She has been crying, takes me inside.

Room and kitchen (no bathroom
or running water): the room
had a brick stove, the kitchen
a dirt floor (with mice and sometimes grass)
and a white washstand — these lines
are all that has survived of them.
There was great beauty in their squalor.

She has been crying, takes me inside,
says she will scold me later.
I know it will be soon. First she must call
the cops to tell them I've been found.

Of course, back then I didn't understand anything:
neither how a poet harms his mother,
nor how alienated (thank you, Marx, for that term)
one can be from the start, and free
in the grip of that greatest paradox of all —
a happy Soviet childhood.
...