We have a slight problem, general:
our children can’t locate themselves
in space and time.
Maps are muddy, and calendars
have no dates for days like these.

A sacred massacre.
An army blues.
Sell us some primal wisdom; we’ll pay you
in golden possibilities.

The womb of knowledge has no muscles.
We are the babies of the cause,
and we know the big belly from the inside.
Who can camber our mindlines?

The wind combs the steppes of the Budapest Memorandum
for fugitives. Forever
is running a high fever:
days and buildings swollen, corners rounded.
What’s the price of a surprise?

Peace is a wreck where pirates grow on masts.
The peace-keepers trade their dreams
for freshly minted safety,
so their nightmares can pass for urban legends.

Chuffety-chakhnuti-chuff.
The comings-together of sleepless whispers…

*

Anatoly Kudryavitsky is from Dublin, Ireland. He is the editor of  SurVision, a magazine for Surrealist poetry. His fifth collection of English-language poems titled The Two–Headed Man and a Paper Life is forthcoming from MadHat. His poems have appeared in Oxford Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, The Prague Revue, The North, Plume, Stride, Otoliths, The American Journal of Poetry, Shot Glass Journal, and others. He has also published seven collections of his Russian-language poems. His latest novel titled The Flying Dutchman has been published by Glagoslav Publications (London, UK) in 2018. He won the Maria Edgeworth Poetry Prize in 2003 and the Mihai Eminescu Academy Poetry Award in 2017.