“A line is a fuse
that’s lit.
The line smolders,
the rhyme explodes—
and by a stanza
a city
is blown to bits.”
― Vladimir Mayakovsky

Love early and love often, but do not allow love to die in the flesh. It should inspire work and art. It should make the world eventful and less cruel. Love is actually impossible to capture in mere poems. Then, the worth of a poem, almost nothing. There are also many kinds of love. Now the deeds which love inspires cannot always undo cold hard circumstance. Not all love is appropriate or movie like love. I have been accused of exclusively loving Russian women, I find this trivial and not purely true. I have loved great women. Powerful in their own right as artists and inspiring in their own conduct. It so happens that many were born in the former Soviet Union. My craft both in the words or in the paint does no real justice to the force majeure of my partners and muses. I am not a womanizer, not every subject was a conquest. Nor am I attempting to claim that courtship, muse like persuit make life anything more than tumultuous living. Yet my life as much as I have lived in so far has been a free life, for I was born with rights and privileges that allowed me wide canvas for painting.

These poems then dedicated to all involved and dedicated to the future. Broken and fallen over many times, our ripped out hearts, our violent fucks, our romance and our adventures. This stuff makes art, but it is not without suffering. I regret nothing. Only the cruel words when said when love like the phoenix dies. Or when when impossible expectations are not met. These women have made me hard enough to do the far rougher work ahead. Poems: silly poems! What are poems to heroic deeds? They are only promises to unlimited operations to come. 

These poems did not write themselves. Great women brought them forth. It is very hard to date a possibly mad man. I am a zealot, driven by unseen forces which make me think battling demons and storming castles and changing whole worlds is possible, if carrying her standard. None of these loves was a perfect love. If such a thing even exists. These are hard and completely glorious women and I attempted to love each fearlessly in art and war, in her own ways. It should be said, that like the Great Soviet poet laureate Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky, to whom I also dedicate this first anthem of my collected poems; I am not wholly at ease in my own time. A hipster makes art for art sake, thinking the art is enough. But actually all great art has to be in service of something more.

Volumes

V. I (One): Vodka Lullabies

1. Revolutions Mostly Happen Live (2002) “Revolution Live”
2. The Life of Night (2011) “Dragon Flying off a Ledge”
3. An Escapade Across General Winter and the Fall (2011)
4. The Cultural Context of Paying for Nothing Upfront (2011)
5. Champagne Campaign: “A Prelude to a Date” (2011)
6. In My New York Cell (2011) “Prisoner to you and the state”
7. The Shuffled Flesh Trophies (2011)
8. (808) Fearless, Hopeless Hearts (2011)
9. Our Job is Great Train Robberies (2012)
10. Bread of the Future (2012)
11. Matchsticks to Mice in the Wilderness (2012)
12. Muse of the Brighton Bathhouse (2012)
13. Sometimes the Vodka Drinks You (2012)
14. You Stoke a Class War Woman (2012)
15. Pararescuemen of the Brooklyn Soviet (2012)
16. Dark Sunglasses (2012)
17. Hungry Eyes Break Hearts on Banner Avenue (2012)
18. Bang! There Just Went Midnight (2012)
19. Looks Like a Love Battlefield (2012)
20. Prisoner to You and the State II (2012) “The Bin You Are In” #6
21. Assignments to Cowardly Men (2012) #27
22. The Sound of a Song in Cyrillic (2012) #32
23. Listen Dorogaya (2012) #33 “The Russian News Years in Boston Poem”
24. Her Bright Eyes Told Men Lies (2012) #36
25. She’s Use the Razors Edge (2012) #37
26. The Moscow Hostage Crisis (2012) #38
27. Bullets for Breria (2012) #42
28. Man Go Home! (2012) #39
29. The Strength of a Drink of Cold Water (2016) #105
30. The Re-Set (2016) #104
31. The Winter of my Life is Over (2012) #64
32. Meet me at the Cobra Club (2012) LOST

V.2: The Unlimited Operation of 2012

33. Ready for More Road (2013) #67
34. My Heart is Akin to a Runaway Slave ( Sept. 2013) #68
35. The Big Brazen Dream (2013) #71
36. Gold Brown Eyes (2013) 
37. She Sometimes Amazed Me How Much (2014)
38. What Science Has Yet to Explain I Have in the Blood (2014)
39. Far Above the Smoke Monsters (2014)
40. Sing More Songs! (2014)
41. LipStick on My Collar (2014)
42.  The Rights to Her (2014)
43. Deliver me from Shivers (2014)
44. From Somewhere With Love (2014)
45. Ineffable Might (2014)

V. 3: True Stories About the War

46. Human Patria! (2013)
47. Just Reckless Dreams (2015)
48. The Strength of a Drink of Cold Water (2016)
49. By these Trials Gored! In four Sonnets (2015)
50. On Havana Road (2015)
51. Blood and Sand in My Eye (2016)
52. Ready for More Road (2016)
53. A Workers Life (2016)
54. Abu Laila (2017)
55. Anya’s Last Toast with Black Tea (2018)
56. How the Story Ends this Time (2018)

V. 4: Attack on New York

57. It’s 1492: Who is Now Where? (2017)
58. Setting a Red and Gold Standard for Something New! (2020)
59. Abe I: Soca and Swords (2018)
60. Abe II: The Weather is Ready for Passion Exploding (2018-2019)
61. The Queen of the Bronx Beckons (2019)
62. The Sale of Sex and Violence Dose Dependent, to Americans (2019)
63. Mother Night (2016)
64. The Bukharin Girl (2016)
65. Stick to the Plan, Man (2011)
66. The Greatest Each Time (2013)
67. Cufflinks for a Funeral (2012)
68. The Clean Out (2012)
69. EMS Lemonade (2022)
70. The Wind that Shakes the FDNY (2008)