Short Poems by Danil Rudoy

Stone, mortar, and every superfluous brick:
This sinuous city is making me sick.
I long to escape and keep moving away,
But new destinations expose old decay.
Another frontier, a gilt cage by the sea
Where people fall short of what they claim to be.
Too torrid or frigid, too dry or too damp:
The whole Earth is one borderless prison camp.

At the cross, you frown;
At the mass… you devil!
Plug that piece of gum
Where cheeks unite.
If you break things down
To the quantum level,
What do they become?
They become light.

From thirty yards, its arc grows steeper,
Then nails top corner past the wall;
And there’s no way thy brother’s keeper
Can get across to save that ball.

Nature’s wonders—cleave as you might—
Life stems.
Chaplain, please, save your prayer
For the true sinner.
Look at them! They shine through the night
Like gems,
Attracting us with their
Eternal shimmer.

Ghosts from the crucible
Steamed like a breeze.
If this is possible,
Anything is.
I’m so irascible…
God, help me, please!
If you’re not passible,
Then nothing is.

I never figured out how
To treat the concept of dying.
Death’s such a low-hanging fruit,
Reach higher, boy, if you can.
And you can shoot me right now
If you believe that I’m lying,
But all you’d do would be shoot
An honest, innocent man.

“What is the hardest?” “To act.”
“Something you don’t buy?” “Providence.”
“If there was one thing you lacked,
What would it be?” “Self-confidence.”

It’s pointless to blame the fathers:
Their epoch’s archaic. Plus,
It’s never about the others:
It’s always about us.

I’m made of “would”
But is so glad
And ironclad
My queasy quip:
Pluck all the good,
Skip all the bad,
Ignore the bad
You couldn’t skip.

It started out with Twitter,
It darted through the bitter,
And now I know: I lit her.
But down with those who flatter.
I’ll throw another at her,
Cause such are things that matter
To everybody’s folks.

Among the shards of time arose
An image worthy of Renaissance.
I think I recognize her nose;
Alas, the rest is evanescence.

The street is a sequence of stairs and levels,
The feelings inside me are totally flat.
She has been my angel, she has been my devil,
She’s never been anything better than that.

Years of silence in a line, –
Unforgettable, at least.
Faithful memory ignites
Recollections of the past.
And the heart shall not decline
Such a loving, little beast
Fed on scores of sleepless nights,
Spurned and cherished, caught and cast.

How hard it is sometimes to strive
And not be fallen prey to coping!
You screamed at noon. But now, at five,
It’s time to reach for some more doping.
Let yet unmarried couples’ hive
Be buzzed with prospects of eloping –
You keep, my angel, us alive,
And I, my angel, keep us hoping.

We’re flying lower, we’re flying higher;
A fall becomes a command to soar.
She went for cash, but I am no buyer:
I don’t relinquish to hope for more.
Perhaps I better await the morning:
It may surrender the missing clue.
This girl is always a healthy warning;
Perhaps she’s crazy; at least she’s true.

What is love? It depends
On the power to see
All the posing you slew
In the corporate hallways.
That we’ll never be friends,
I can well guarantee;
But an army of two
We will keep being always.

Love is inhuman when raised as an idol
Calling for sacrifice, blood as décor.
Often in deeds, and in thoughts suicidal,
We’re at the mercy of those we adore.
It’s in their eyes that we’re looking for Eden.
Credulous victims, what moves us the most?
Poems about love that’s forbidden,
And poems about love that is lost.

“My love is growing day by day;
Does yours keep up, sir sinner?”
“How can it not? And, by the way:
What do we have for dinner?”

Humiliate and dignify!
Don’t question what your heart may feel.
Our art is blind and does defy
AI by general appeal.

Choke on your stocks and gold,
Devil. I guarantee:
Poets will rule this world,
Poets like Goethe and me.