My Cousin Mayakovsky's Drainpipe

This is a photo of a Mayakovsky statue. When I took it my cousin advised that Mayakovsky be the highest thing in the skyline. So there it is, the silhouette of the man Stalin declared "the best and most talented poet of our epoch." Here is a bit without line breaks from "A Cloud in Trousers." Your thoughts, dreaming on a softened brain, like an over-fed lackey on a greasy settee, with my heart's bloody tatters I'll mock again; impudent and caustic, I'll jeer to superfluity. Of Grandfatherly gentleness I'm devoid, there's not a single grey hair in my soul! Thundering the world with the might of my voice, I go by -- handsome,twenty-two-year-old.Gentle ones! You lay your love on a violin. The crude lay their love on a drum. but you can't, like me, turn inside out entirely,and nothing but human lips become!Out of chintz-covered drawing-rooms, comeand learn-decorous bureaucrats of angelic leagues.and you whose lips are calmly thumbed,as a cook turns over cookery-book leaves.If you like-I'll be furiously flesh elemental,or - changing to tones that the sunset arouses -if you like-I'll be extraordinary gentle,not a man, but - a cloud in trousers!

And here is the haunted drain pipe in which I found these words:

O, laptop
O, drainpipe
O, medical equipment for blood purification
O, Siberian ticks that cause Lyme borreliosis
O, interview that never happens
O, cafe that used to play good music
Girl who used to read my stuff,
Cigarettes I could smoke w/ out guilt,
Waiter who brought me free coffee

You have froze or rusted
Impossible,
Completely practical
Cramped torso
Squeaky brain
After 15
It
Hits!
Once you've acquiesced to this
Condition
Stopped
The feeling before an iceberg
The size of Chinese libertarians-
Once the morning toothbrush
Hysteria has stopped
You begin quietly bitching
When eating with your colleagues
Once you have
More colleagues than friends and most of the day is
Spent thinking
About flea bits
Not
The flea pit orchestra
When you come home to rearrange
You refrigerator collection
And the bathrooms are no longer a place
Of refuge but something you build
And it feels like you're having sex with you mother
Waiting for a vacation
On the beach
Where you write batteries into existence
With anti-histamines
That taste like radiator fluid

Of course everything has changed
And here is the haunted drain pipe in which i found these words:
O, laptop
O, drainpipe
O, medical equipment for blood purification
O, Siberian ticks that cause Lyme borreliosis
O, interview that never happens
O, cafe that used to play good music
you that used to read my stuff, cigarettes i could smoke w/ out guilt, watier who brought me free coffee with shots of whiskey
you have froze or rusted
impossible,
completely practical
cramped torso
squeeky brain
after 15 it hits!
once you've aquisced to this
consition -stopped
the feeling before
an iceberg the sice of Chinese libertarians-
once the morning toothbrush
hysteria has stopped
you begin quietly bitching
when eating with you colleagues
once you have more colleagues
than friends and most of the day is
spent thinking
about flea bites
not the flea pit orchestra
when you come home to rearrange
you refrigerator collection
and the bathrooms are no longer a place
of refuge but something you build
and it feels like your having sex with you mother
waiting for a vacation
on the beach
where you write batteries into existence
with anti-histamines
that tastes like radiator fluid

Of course
But when you wisely tell your children that no one changes
despite the obvious girth of your swollen ontology

Look around you
You big phony!

They are designing bodies and video games in your name
They have put your last name
on all the
toasters,
underwear and pliers in the store,
Where are your children?
No, the talking ones
Yes, them
There they are
Sailing a garbage ship
Across the Atlantic
Look there they are
In Paris
Mocking the pigeons
They have designed new underwear
They have reconstructed Atlantis
Where do you think
It all went?
The past?
H@!
Look at your laptop
Take a few good whiffs of your lover's underwear
The past is the future
Made up of the past's grocery bags
The present a collection of lost opportunities
Dressed in grey business suits and fat ties
You lover has long since gone
He has replaced himself with another animal
Where is she?
No, that's a gerbil
Run,
Run, run,
Run, run, run run
Run
Run run
Run run run run

Go
Go go
Go go go go
Go go go go go go go

Sew your underwear into a kite
Toss from your window your desktop computer
Donate your car to public radio
And buy a china-man with a rickshaw
Order a carafe and pour it into your purse
Take the homeless woman out on the town
Sleep with the waitress
Of course she won't sleep with you
Of course you should ask her to a play
And offer her the hamster's hand in marriage

Yes
Yes yes yes
Yes

You've got it
Now toss it
And grab that chair over there
We're gonna need it
Where we're going

Boys Just Want to Have Fun

This image is pulled from the gay pride parade in San Francisco. Nothing really special, just a bunch of boys out having fun. Eddy Mercury would be proud.

Below are images from the gay pride parade that occured in Moscow May 27, 2006. These boys are also out having a good time, righting the wrongs, fighting the good fight...

Moscow Pride

Gay Pride Moscow Style.

Babies and Workers

Partisans

The Readers

Revolution Square

Here are some photos from one of my favorite metro stations –Revolution Square. From what I understand it is illegal to take photos down here, but the cops I talked to seemed to be more than helpful when answering my questions. Some of these figures are polished yellow in areas (e.g. the nose of the german shepherd). As people walk by they touch parts of the figures, apparently for good luck. The figures are supposed to represent all the parts of society that need to work in order for the revolution to be a success. One of the things that always strikes me is the attention to gender the municipalities had when creating these figures. If there is a man with a rifle there is a woman with a rifle; if there is a woman with a baby there is a man with a baby. There are always two sets of figures representing each theme and almost always one is female and the other male.