who isn’t you
wise readers
will know the difference
I want a narrator
more unsettling
than Nabokov created
for ‘Lolita’
I want a narrator
to cringe at
while sympathizing with
I need “milk plus”
from ‘Clockwork Orange’
while I learn the dialect
of Anthony Burgess
before I ruin Beethoven
It takes sustained energy
to hate a character
while never forgetting them
“My vanity
was the cause
of it”
I still wink at you,
Moll Flanders
a woman too clever
for shallow understanding
My “androgynous mind”
will have to be enough
for adequate love,
Virginia Woolf
I have all the worst intentions:
devious dialog
with peppered,
cutting
fashion statements
to make phantom readers
laugh and scowl
Cruella Deville
taught me everything
one late afternoon
in August
while we hunted swans
over toast points
and caviar
‘Most of the dandelions had changed from suns into moons.’ – Vladimir Nabokov
The humble dandelion Earth bequeaths.
Oh, golden bloom which ancient lore bequeaths
that fortune ‘s woven into bridal wreaths.
The dandelion turns from sun to moon.
A dandelion morphs from sun to moon
for wishes cast so young and old may swoon.
The Shepherd’s Clocks are pacing march of time.
My Shepherd’s Clock is marking march of time
as day would turn to night with stars sublime.
The moonlight whispers capture early twilight
of moonlit scenes betwixt erstwhile twilights—
a transformation silence cloak the night.
The fairy clocks now spent, they dream of sheen
of mornings when they shone, showily preened.
"And if my private universe scans right, // So does the verse of galaxies divine ..." - from the poem "Pale Fire" by Vladimir Nabokov.
In Wonderland, with Alice I would walk
and speak with Cheshire Cats and one March Hare,
then through the looking glass, a Jabberwock,
as Tweedledum and Tweedledee would stare.
With Lucy in her diamond-studded sky,
newspaper taxis and cellophane flowers,
I found myself sharing marshmallow pie
with rocking horse people for countless hours.
In Narnia, I met the Pevensies
a Faun and Lion past the wardrobe door.
In Middle Earth I learned of talking trees,
and hobbits, dwarves, and elves - brave to the core.
Between the lines of lyrics, prose and verse
flew rockets in my private universe.
written 17 Sep 2020
you were a false blue sky, reflected - I, a sparrow winging to love
too late realized - your heart, the cold, hard window ... to explain the truth.
~ 2nd Place ~ in the "ku duet" Poetry Contest, Silent One, Judge & Sponsor.
( In honor of Vladimir Nabokov )
“LIKE A MADMAN THINKS HE'S GOD, WE THINK WE'RE MORTAL”. Delaland, Speech on Shadows
Transparency is the key to the social harmony. Transparent people pass through each other like light through water. No one blocks out the sunshine, no one bars the way, no one stands in line in front of the other. The content of pockets, stomachs and minds are all in plain view. Mutual permeability, politeness, indifference. The see through popeyed souls, as sleepy as fish in an aquarium, come alive only at the sight of you, poet. You're opaque and therefore dangerous. You're a poet and therefore guilty. Alas, there is nothing more impenetrable than the walls in a transparent prison. But soon, from the height of your scaffold, you will see the world as opaque as you that awaits you on the other side of life.
get him grab his legs
hold him down I'll chop it off…
where'd you go poet
Dedicated to Cincinnatus C., the protagonist of the novel "Invitation to a Beheading" by Vladimir Nabokov
21.11.2019
Opaque Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Anthony Slausin
oh my big cousin
a dusk gaze beamy lashes
a little temper
how foggy you are
forbidden fruits of knowledge
through bathroom keyhole
once she spanked the boy
but punishment was more like
a hidden caress
luckily she died
before I grew up enough
to do stupid things
unfortunately
I still try to look for her
in my foggy hell
*** WRITER'S STATEMENT ***
All of the above is a first-person fantasy. The Freudians and champions of morality have nothing to do here. As Vladimir Nabokov said in one of his interviews: "The author in the process of work never identifies himself with the protagonist..., his character lives a free, independent life; in this life everything is predetermined, and no one can change its measured pace".
Well said, Vladimir. Metaphysically, that goes for all of us too.
21.07.2019
Multiple-Haikus Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Jamie Pan
Syllables Per Line: 5 7 5 0 5 7 5 0 5 7 5 0 5 7 5 0 5 7 5
Oh, how high your brow ripe with laurus
ascends above the literary world!
Your multilingual bottomless thesaurus
is full of diamonds, emeralds and gold.
I'm sorting through these treasures in the shadow
of your memorial chosen by the birds:
the butterflies, the motherland, the meadow
as green as youth, the chess, the rhymes, the words.
Oh, those words! The words? It would be better
to call them spells, the spells I haven't yet
defeated. This is why the every letter
of me is soaked in your magic sweat.
They say, I am possessed by you. That day
I came into the world, you went away.
Dedicated to the memory of my favorite writer, Vladimir Nabokov.
Gold is covering emerald leaves,
I can see cloudy heaven is numb,
Asters, dahlias blooms among grieves
like a garland they cannot succumb.
Little rain is annoying sometimes,
It is hanging like muddy cobweb,
The wind plays with the foliage that lies,
It will fly away newly, don't grab.
And sometimes daring ray of sunshine
will burn lightly with its rare kiss,
Clouds run fast spinning over skyline -
Clouds of numerous gold-plated leaves.
November, 1915
P.S. This is my translation of poem by Vladimir Nabokov.
Lolita’s Conceit
Obsession defined
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
An accursed passion
Love’s true abomination.
Literary allusion
Tintinnabulation
Sounding moral oblivion
God’s sure condemnation.
Gary Bateman, Copyright © All Rights Reserved,
August 18, 2018 (Double Dactyl)
In truth Clare Quilty
Was clearly guilty,
While humble Humbert Humbert
Was fervently pervert.
The issue to talk of
What told us Nabokov ?
From Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment,
to Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, not to mention
Nabokov, Chechov and of course Zhivago,
your books have lined my shelves. As a boy,
I lived inside and tried to find myself.
As a man I learned to see, to speak and even
break free, in moments that came randomly.
I yearned to feel, to touch and even bleed
as I wandered through this world aimlessly.
I regained my trust but gained not much.
And now, your eastern wind has begun to blow
that old dust off my restless and unsettled soul.
It gets me thinking, reminiscing, remembering
It fills my screen with curiosities. Another great
Russian book to read, nothing less, nothing more.
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