nick mancuso’s “hotel praha” a psychologue

HOTEL PRAHA

(Saw Dust Dreams in an Ole’ Commie Hotel)

A PSYCHOLOGUE

By Nick Mancuso,
De Mammola.

First performed at Theatre Passe Muraille. Toronto Canada,

Spring,1999, directed and produced by Hrant Allianak.

INTRO

PRAGUE 1994,

LATE SUMMER

I’m here shooting two small pictures back to back,and staying at the “Hotel Praha” on the outskirts of the old city.The hotel is a monstrous techno-glass and steel compound specifically built for the old soviet politburo 4,5 years before the Velvet Revolution and the
downfall of Communism, before the ascent of Havel.Suffering from jetlag and insomnia and the crazy hours of modern co-production filmmaking.to say nothing of the fatty food and endless cups of dense bohemian espresso I begin to write a kind of lyrical -nightmarish piece reacting to the dark energies of the golden soot- covered city that spawned Kafka, the Golem,Smetana,the Bohemian Spirit of the20th century. It is a city of bridges and castles of alleyways and huge squares teeming with people, at every corner there is life. Gigantic autro-hungarian theatres built by Florentine architects, a creme de la creme of architectural delight, a jewel in the heart of Europe over which, a spell had been cast. I am here when the spell is begin lifted and the Princess awakes, bones breaking and with a bad case of halitosis.

Everything since the Big Change has gone American only the worst elements, a ferocious consumerism, country and western musak, its like a weird mid-European tex-arkana redneckism combined with the residues of 40 years of soviet oppression. The dense packed, paranoid kgbism that was there 5 years before ¶e has been replaced by a bizarre combination of the worst of American kitch and fraudulent raw consumerist need. There are signs on the freeway pointing the way to supermarkets,macdonalds and k mart can be found. No more lineups, no more weighing the chicken bits. Businesses pay as much as 30 percent for protection from the virulent local mafias. Cabdrivers rip off tourists with ferocious intent and yell at you if you argue. Sex-clubs are everywhere, Playboybunny shoots in the lobby of the Hotel with buckbaked naked Czech girls re-enacting the Christmas Cover of
Playboys circa 1965, all run by the former head of the K.G.B.I
Its like watching a speeded up version of the 50’s and the 60’s, the 70’s-circa 1972 now. The lobby of the hotel is filled from tourists from all over Europe, getting a bargain vacation.
The Arabs, ygolslavs, Russian, roumanians, communist Chinese are gone. English-speaking theatres are springing up everywhere ø, the city holds as many as 20,000 kids from all over, re-enacting the Bohemian life getting drunk, getting laid, writing, painting, the clubs are packed to the roof, a kind of 1920’s Paris in the 1990’s. There is a fin de siecle feel here, a repeat of the beginning at the end. It starts to feel feverish, almost insane.At the airport 2 and one half pounds of uranium are discovered in a suitcase en-route to the mid-east sold to the smugglers by the janitor of one of the soviet bloc
Nuclear reactors. There are over fifty-thousand unemployed, highly
skilled technicians from the various nuclear plants, 7000 of whom are capable of building a nuclear device on their own. Back in
America there is only talk of O.J.

Every night watching from the balcony of my suite which had
at one time housed the likes of Breznev and his staff I sit hour after hour watching the distant famous black castle that overlooks
the city. The Tesla tube radio in the corner plays classical music
barely audible. The hotel sleeps.

Voices and Visions assail me from the dark fog all around
and seemingly from the castle itself. Strange dark angels float above me, circle around me, asking me, compelling me to record. Riding the elevator one bleary eyed morning two thuggish looking Russians in ill fitting pinstripe suits are standing next to me, talking in insistent low-voices. Are they gangsters, thugs, businessmen, pimps? As they leave I hear one of them mutter to the other in mid-conversation-”Spolenska”
I go back thru the unlit hallways to my room and write.
Hotel Praha was first produced at Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto Canada. It was directed and produced by Hrant Alianak, written and starred Nick Mancuso. 7 performances were given.

HOTEL PRAHA

“SPOLENSKA,, SAWDUST DREAMS IN AN OLE COMMIE HOTEL”

“more sausages, more pigs than i ever seen anywhere”
Spolenska

“How do you like your blue-eyed boy, Mr Death?”
e.e. cummings

…Sleepless/forsaken/, the town at night/, yes
The twinkling
Lights/ in the foggy distance/, barely visible/the castle
Is heavy/is weary….
& I am exhausted from film and jetlag/
jackbooted
By headaches and a bad stomach/a flu
And times out of joint/
&the frozen headed chatter
of youth
,and jealous older age
i wonder with what detail
of loss i must go to this funeral(,oh spolenski is lost in the fog/gone back to the
steppes/the trancaucaucus/back to old india
she is lost perched above the door of memory
a carrion bird of desire a harpie,a fury,a tornado
of black choking smoke…spolenska is gone
gone back to Brno and beyond.

She was a funeral of lost causes & spent desire
deliquent airs/
a process, a beaurocracy of despair
she told me that the ghost of communism still
hovers here/
at hotel praha,like a toxic fart
she tells me this now sitting/
in the lobby with the low
flat spaceage ceiling ribbed in brass and cut glass
moser crystal,drips drips drips in this elegant
technocratic castle
“in our history we have gone/
from castle to
castle to castle..”she tells me this legs crossed
dressed to the 9s/
a sex bimbo,, neo- ˚technocratic
in this beautiful day of spring
she is trained
trained for sex,a sex
/ robot,r.u.r.urready

. When Spolenska smiles
her lips curl up
thin and beautiful I tell her
shes a pole and not a czech
shes not from here,shes not a
. czch,vowless,dry,like insects mating
czech what kinda word is that
in the dry darkish air
her eyes are blue large her hair
honey blonde,whatkinda word is
that she says “skuu..”
“Shy?” I ask her” What are you saying? “Are you saying
sky?” sometimes when shes tired she
breaks down and gets pissed
at this english she is forced to
translate how do you translate blood
“How do you translate,blood,bones, breath?”
when i ask her “why is that?”
she zens me with a dry stare replies
“they dont care.”
there are no rivers here
only vlatava,die moldau
Spolenska has known all about this/
about river and plains
about mountains with no name
,she was beaten herself/
half to death by manic cool chainsmoking/
russian mafia cab drivers

once/
one of them took an uzi
out of the trunk of his car and waved it/
in to he air as she ran,
breaking her heel on the black
cobblestoned street
he laughing,choking
, tho he did not fire.
at her

here in Prague
tho the slant-eyed computor salesmen have
have arrived
i cough all the time
living on boiled lard and beets,thick black
bread and espresso, i swallow the mucous
in my mouth unable to find a white a napkin,
covered paper they call it/
(i had never seen a woman as beautiful
as her)
when the commisars of commission arrive
(spolenski says i complain too much, i know nothing
about lying under a bed as the bullets rip thru the
dirty kitchy wall paper..)
they arrive in chinese droves,driving thu the clean
marble lobby ,past the swinging chandeliers,
briefcased
and svelte
into cheap suits,
i choke on smoke
and vomit,while they march
into the narrow tomb of
elevators to variagated floors
. of busted light
while the c&w band
plays in czech-accented english
and the spanish cartoon
tourists complain about this
about that until the desk clerks tells them in no uncertain term s
that they should know english
and not spanish,
english is the language of business
these tourists
at least the italians come for
textiles and whores..
. …….spolenska thinks/
that they are fools/all/all/alles
its 3.am a quivering high voice sings
softly from
the tesla radio,a high voice
small tinny in the corner
of the room;in the shadows,
the dark city sleeps against me
rubbing against my shoulders
leans and snores like a drunk,passed out,
everyone
sleeps the praha
sleeps,
the thick brothy sleep of ages
the dead
in the old jewish cemetery sleep,kafka
and his
mother asleep in
each others arms….
folded,like covered paper

Oh spolenska, listen to me
here in rat hotel
where the ensemble cherubic angels
covered in glitter play
136. in the hallsways,next to the sleeping all
night
waitors in frowsy tuxedos
leaning against the wall
the chair off its front
legs asleep.

the bed sleeps but i do not,
i float above the city looking
for you spolenska,champion lover
of the prevailing
dream-winds,
ther e
below the black sooted moon…

but i do not find you
insomniac,jetlagged,poisoned
by the food
this place
serves no-one,but everyone sleeps
,over this half world
beneath the poisoned clouds and
the tall bricked
shunts, the stacks, the chimney,
spewing
spewing into the terrible
black night air folded with bright red
sparks inside
burning moths,

ah spolenska
why wont you let me sleep
i have such need,in all the rooms
the families of spanish
tourists, the israelis,are sleeping,the dutch
couples,
the mainland chinese businessmen,the russian
gangsters
the old winos on st.charles bridge
,all of europe is
sleeping, spolenska,
and here i am in the cold
mercury heart of this black night
and am awake
it is not insominia but a deep confusion
of the senses
a playing around of the eternal
bio-rht hyms, even the dogs,mangy
and curled are asleep
and more than all
the soot black castle sleeps.

is it you that keeps me awake?
last night to st.stephens in despair i came
for help not to hug the golden statues
the gold- crowned madonnas
holding porcelain babies
but
to you i came for help
i came and i said
that needed someone to hold
“I can not hold you just now “
you said you were
lost to some distant seas,swimming
in oceans that
have no name,antipodal
and forlorn
as i was i can not hold you
now the current is too strong
it seems foul and enweakened,unable to raise
one arm aganst
the other i dropped
listlessly and slid along
the old walls and
you disappeared winked/ vanished
like a feather/
into the night

where have you gone now?
ill formed,at night to stephens church
in despair
i came for help you said i need
. someone
. to hold,weeping,drenched in rain
. i can not hold you now
. lost
to some distant seas,stirring
in oceans
which are nameless,
the current is far too strong
the fog too thick in the shrouded
wood
that lets you out beyond
the gulf,towards
the icefloes

You belong to the gulf and
not to to the land,
no to to me or anyone
not to the black-shrouded castle

at breakfast I sit
unable to wake you ask
“why are pulling at me?”
nightvoices are whispering
tossing and turning unable
to sleep or to awake
worring about the time-
why worry about the time?

and the clock
all night long (he worked)
“and a voice woke you and said
clear as the bells of st.stephens
“why are pulling at me?”

she taunts me with teutonic
barbs,half-witch half angel
“i didnt recognize you,not here
in Prague,you have so many
different faces,but this face i like
the more
that man followed me
again last night
while shopping for a winter
coat at the k mart
“what is it you want?”
i asked
“you” he replied
and made a horrible sucking
sound with toothless
gums

She strips before me
her ghost is as
awkward as little bo beep
she calls to things
in the darknesss
small animals with glittering eyes
lost things listen to her and she takes them
in one by one finding them a home

but for me there
is no home
in her
cavernous heart…oh..i sleep

Music Up
(refrain)

“And When it finally Becomes Clear
That the Commission is Too Dear
Then Heads of States and Charlatans
Will Make all Intentions Clear”

New Mornings

Here at Hotel Praha. when i lie down
,cough and swallow the poliburo, I think. must have
swallowed sawdust with the mucous vapourous
love of the common man

the ghost of Stalin hovers here still
at the top of the stairs
and in the bowling alleys
“these
ideals of mispent american youth!”
,(she tells me
that I complain too much,) makes me unattractive
make me rude,undignified,graceless,
at my age
She told me this last night next to the spinning
chandeliers
while the fat proprietor
looked on and did not pretend
to look away she had tears in her
eyes, saltless ones,
in that clean marble stare of hers
. her legs moulded from moravian crystal,svelte
and briefcased I finding the elevator door
down.to hell……a bronze statue of Victory!

And when that golden opportunity comes,
Yes,when it comes
when that nightmare arrives
dragging behind,the black Horses of
Loss,oh when it arrives
,dragging silver pears in palm
riding the high Horses of Hope,entering thru the
lobby,dragging sacfuls of lost causes & spent wasted
wasted,wasted, ideals O Europa mother Europa,Pan
Europa! thy days are numbered and accounted for

New Voices

I spent two days in anger
over a silly detail of
Her makeup,futzing
like an old queen unable to
find my face in the mirrored halls,the waitors
must
have thought me mad,but
i was un able to find
my face, touched as i was by
ghostly anorexic fingers brushing me
like long haired reeds…

it was all love lack she
said ,simple- love lack-
a feeding emptiness
of depairfrom which the darkness feeds

i got so angry i kicked
over the breakfast tray sending silver spoons and caviar flying in
slow-mo,a feeding emptness
from whatever her sickness fields

THE GHOST MONK APPEARS

slackjawed now,a black robed figure
hovers above my bed,in the radioactive night
i am brightly awake/ and sad beyond the size of mountains
in a full-clouded moon above/,the thick thumbed
Vescoval giants curse a benediction

i feel sunburst thru this night!
come missile-skies, is coming
wending thru
marshamalow skies
pleased as punch
with direction- directionless
metal phalluses hurled by crones

crouching in despair towards the evil
Star above the city of Prague,” a false paradise
it was all a false paradise/ of power!”

in/
the morning
the sun migranous,malevolent
winks thru spires and fog riding above Bohemia…

“Oh life was safe then
when the blue comets flew
oh, life, it was safe then, now ignorance
and tomfooleries
abound!”,the skin of the sun
nauseates me
from the day before
oh life was safe then,
transfixed to death,entranced
the skin
of the -sun- hanging-loose- as- old skin
is-loose,dry-hacked ,redolent,
with evil-witch intent!

its 3.a.m.
the night before while i slept
an old drunk rummaged through my pockets
double identities abound
& there can be no sound………..

NEW DAY

“When Spolenska smiles
her lips curl up
thin and beautiful I tell her
shes a pole and not a czech
shes not from here,shes not a
“czech!” what kinda word is that
“czch!”,vowless,dry,like Insects mating
her eyes are blue large her hair
honey blonde,whatkinda word is
that she says “skuu..”
“Shy?” I ask her “Are you saying
Sky? What are you saying”

sometimes when shes tired she
breaks down and gets pissed
at this “english” she is forced to

translate how do you translate blood
“How do you translate,blood,bones, br eath?”

. in the black skoda driving
. at 160 kilometers per hr.,the endless transformers
. flicking by in full broad daylight
flicking by electric T.shaped wires
in the hills around the city where
the the prehistoric metereorite hit, on the lip of
the volcano long spent,voiceless, now

“I want to go to Mala Strana for tea and service”
she says,looking out the window suddenly cheerful
manic
tranformers flicking
by on a field of
green stubbled grass snapped
like a fresh
deck of alchemical cards

past the postcard industry
the coal chocked towns,the tall 1940’s
bricked stacks,the electric wires,wires,wires,

“Are you willing” she asks.
“ I want to go..to go..
“I want to go to Mala Strana, on my broom!”

MUSIC UP

We pull over near the river
no vowels to this landscape
no vowels to your life oh she
is fresh grass at morn ing
tide st soon she’ll go to
seed like those moslem wives
layered in fat and cloth
soon she’ll sprout
smellling of jasmine and sweat

like those covered moslem wives,
at the Holiday Inn
in Vienna a face in each one
yes i say lets go to Malastrana
to Ujezdi st.,near St.Stephens
………………………
HE SINGS

“there are bubbles
in the state of her big fat heart
she serves goulash
morning noon and night
and gawd her feet smell

awful strong”

MUSIC UP,RADIO AMERICA

we listen to the river high
on the enbankment, where the
black cobblestones are transfixed
one, two, three, into the other like a black
oily sheen,

”there are more pigs
here than i seen anywhere,
more
sausage and dumplings”
in America i tell her we slaughter
pigs by the millions and not
a one complains -she laughs
like
a dark violin
shes been to America she says and she hates it,she knows all about
America
she said it was all a lie
that she had been to newyork and miami
and to the upstate to the Hudson and Calabassas and the meandering indian towns with names like Wannawannabee!
and Panawanatosh,and Irvington,knew about
Hayawatha and the Iriqiuos and the
peaceful legends, before the coming
of the whites,knew it was all a lie!

that there she was just an immigrant
in a land of immigrants

that she undone by Greyhound
and the burnt out centres of cities
and she knew about the awful violence
of its people,

details lack
hands do not move,

glasscracks,toothache abound,hair

falls out in handfuls
in America as well as here

but the raw of her i am not alone
she came back after
Colorado and the Grandcanyon
when the tourist sound of her own language
brought her back

HER STORY

shes been sent by the agency to translate
the first day
at breakfast we sit awkward, as children
she said “we go now pliss” go where? i asked
she seemed confused so i repeated “where?
is -there- to-go? just to confuse her all the
more what is your name? how are you?
and i realized that she thought the question was real

when i asked how are you that I meant it
literally because she stopped and made a face
ashen
as if to reply to an impossible demand
“why are you asking?
what is it about me that you see that you should
ask such a question?what is to you?!”

PART TWO

Spolenska sits alone today
,sips coke alone, in the lobby
of Hotel Praha,today
she has long red crackling-cranberry
hair,tonight she will be a witch

“everyone wonders at
how good everyone else is..”
she says

sipping
brackish liquid thru a rainbow -coloured
straw
like a barbers pole

“its not important
how good
or how bad..” her face is reddened by flames winds
as light as dreams
lap her,brush aside her darkness
in sillouttted lighted
she appears and dissappears
she looks perched to fly
made all of bronze
in one hand a sprig of laurel
in the other headless Samothrace

“why do you act this way?” shes ask
“americans are a surprised people”
she replies and i act surprised
“they were born yesterday and think only
of tomorrows but tomorrow is always
tomorrow and never now…”
“its not all disneyland you know!”

the old heater rattles, crackles like a train
in full flight,tomorrow i must shop
for shoes at the k-mart on narodni
for butter and bread, for a sweater
a microscope, a bottle opener,
. she will not date the city men she finds them
weak,she prefers foreigners

i worry with desire &clutch myself
think about all the girls i learnt
to worry about
,the part of me that moves
about the future is
speechless with fright
i am unable to speak the common courtesy
of the land to ask for food
or directions for protection
. i rely on the air for pronuciation
as she relies on a language
of collapse,there are unknown sands
here,it hits me for the first time

but spolenska is naked at all times
covered in the skin of cloth, a soviet tank
about her innards i realize she has no need
. for supermen, they have come and gone
. she stands on stage alone, a pair
of golden shears in hand caught in the
left handed curtain of history
in a sea of troubles, in an ocean of raunchy
willingness what is it you want? why do you act so surprised?
tonight she will go to a screening of a new film
hosted by macdonalds
and tomorrow a playboy shoot
here in the lobby of the hotel
hosted by the former k.g.b.

PAUSES’HE DANCES.MUSIC

“why do you act so surprised?”
“when its bad news,its always
bad news disguised as the good,it was worse
then,when it was worse, now, its bad
when its bad now its better
why are you all such fools?
no,not…”
“do you know how many words there are
for no..in czeck?” and she hold up her hands
“many,gradations of no..”
. there as stood by the clock
on Old Time Square
where Jan Husek had been
. burned,the inventor of the
famous clock castrating himself
using his body to choke
the machinery,his own
. own blood clogging the mechanism
because he had been blinded
and betrayed by the council
. “why are there so many gradations
of no? why do you think?
as the bells started ringing and the tourists
gaped like retarded children
how can there be love in this
twisted prism of desire?

i tell spolenska everthing,that i’m terrified of deceivers
that the players frighten me, young girls scare me
i have always run away she laughs and takes a
drag on that awful chocking tobacco
always encircked in gold leaf,with a name like r ubiconred or newyorkerorjohhnydeds
and laughs crossing and uncrossing
the peeping shyness of her
the cross of flesh absorbs everything
even the tanks tread,it is selfishness
the drowners fight till i can no longer
bear her…

“You know nothing about the world,america
you suffer over cream,your center can not
hold the fraying edge of distance
of unravelling you dissolve like
ice in rainwater..”

i have become a river in her prayer

am i dreaming?
hair falls out,glass cracks,toochaches abound
the spinning wheels of flesh that move the lips
without a sound
and i think the world is round

after each lap of love i feel for her frail
girlishness,she stands next to me on a chair
her clothes off and says ‘….’
with the embarrassment of the cosmos
on her shoulders till i think she will
melt away to freckles”

i toiled in the vineyard for years
waiting for a harvest that never came
instead of wheat,sweetgrass &fallow game
came nettles,weeds and tears.

Confused by the body,spolenska whose name now i can
never remember,whose car will not start
has a face like Bottticellis venus,as isee it now
thru disturbed glass, a face like pottery
with small uneven teeth,yet she is beaautiful sometimes
the way old things are beautiful
the way flames are beautiful
drinking from her
i hear a tiny snap like a forest twig
within her room there is the smell of diesel
there are guarantees of nothing here.

in strange twittering tongues of birds her room
fills up with jumk from k mart
the smart german tourists took everything
years ago,all the fine austrohungarian
stuff anything that wasnt bolted down

yet i want to put her on a shelf
chimeral, pants wide open
obsessed with pullullating i want to scream
her out of here into the void
into a phone line that connects
drag her by the hair
“cant you see that i’m fine the way that i am?”
she asks giggling into the champagne and
the tin of caviar and onions we share
its night the trams on ujezdi street rattle
and stirs the door frame of her lair

“in the 1930’s this place was paradise
you could not imagine it
so beaut iful, like a lithe woman
all covered in gemstone leaning
back, before the compromise
of race before the promise was made
and not kept.”

“we were not invaded we asked them in!”

you learn after a while to let them in
when they come knocking at the door
in the middle of the night drunk as usual
those pigs…..

at the train station she stops for cigarettes
and pays in crowns instead of dollars
then becomes angry with me
for what reason? why are you angry with
me.spolenska?for all the lost reasons left
years ago in a flurry of harsh voices,because i
am childless and middleaged incapable
of loving you,i want to love but for
reasons other than the chant of tourist
love, a love complete and whole
as untasted bread,look Spolenska the
trees are soon to bud,the cha rcoal
grey skies will soon crack and spill
colour all over look! look!

on ujezdi st.
in a corridor of sound
from trams and delipitation
i go to a phonebooth to call to
her, i think there is an ancient
volcano here,here beneath this
blackcobblestone,beneath these
flattened and compressed
houses, a crater larger than
the city,that stretched its
crack deep into the earth
to limits unknown,once that
brought forth this fruit of black
rock,sputum of crystal

this was at the time of the blue comets when
they flew have i gone mad?
i remember the Time of Freezing
when the tribes came omindirectional
so many died in the shrouded woods
its why you have come to suffer
i dial the phone and this time it
eeks and dies you dont believe me do you
its why you have come to this city
why do you think for the weather
the churches,the architecture the sexclubs
the food what her hair is new blonde now
a wig? gold as honey and she wears about her
neck a brooch of green glittering stone
stellated by fiery red pinpoints emeralds
“ its moldavite” she says “found on the banks
of vlatava,the river moldau,fragments of
meteroties that flew millions of years
old,when the blue comets blue the pope
has one just like this a rosary a gift
from the people,from havel,do you
remember the time of the gathering
have you remembered yet who you are?Have you?”

“Do you remember making love last night
against the wall of st.stephens,in the alleyway
so passionate so rude?”

i call and call
until the phone congeals…

hair falls out,glass cracks
toothaches abound,the spinning wheels
move the lips without a sound

its rainining
the fog
congeals
becomes bitter
drops like tears
. horses cough
in the dampwet air
my hair curls
. and the phantasm of autumn
leaves it lair
and still no spolenska…

In malastrana
thru the alleyways at night
my spirit walks,hands deep in pockets
stillshivering unable
to stop knocking at church doors
knocking at decaying palaces

remnants of kingly things
. “my father appeared to me
. in a dream” she said,last night
and he had never seemed happier
. but i still hunger for this world
and all of its girls
and the dancing on a fence
. of a moon

i said to him
still spirit
“look,look,everyone jumps out
. of their skins” replaced by fog

in her sleep her voice
sounds like the wings of insects
mating drying rubbery hacking

a language of whispered alleyways
a language to be whispered not
spoken,many-spoken,she tells me
that she has a key to an apartment
. that she will give it to me
but that it was stolen by the k.g.b.
. who took everything of hers,her
family photos, her children,her identity
the buzzer on her door
has not worked since 1943

we sit together
in old monastary park
on the twilight
watching the apples drop

“you musnt touch those apples” says she
they belong to the state and the state
sells them back to us at exorbitant prices!”

SINGS

I toiled in the Vineyard for Years
Looking for a Cornucopia that never Came
Instead of Sweetgrass, Wheat and Fallow Game
Came Nettles, Weeds, and Tears

my house is broken my clothes are poor
the windows blown, the shattered door

its 5.a.m.
unable to wake she asks
“why are you pulling at me?”

the fog in the wood has made
mistakes before/difficult to correct
. easier to bear
spolenska sleeps and in her sleep
. she tosses and turns

. the comets whisp about her like
fireflies in a soft Moscow white night

then she awakes
then she is bright bright
consuming light

. like a sparkler burning
. she flays above the castle
above narodni and malastrana
above old town square
. zooms by wencelaus square
where she was there during
the velvet time,golem haunted,yes

and more,she moves towards the
black castle towards toucnik,beyond brno and
. past pilsen,spooky as a 40’s film beyond
warsaw and the hungarian plateau,the
highgrasslands and purple woods
towards the mountains and beyond……
away
away.

“i interpret the world
thru woods and by words
until there are no words”

“i
laugh at the americans when
i see how frail they really are,unable
to be late for appointments or
to skip them altogether…”

“here, we measure and
. weigh our food,not wanting
to have more than the other
conscious of the other,not
wanting to take away this need

or the fullfillment of this need
we are more concerned with
you than you are with us
because we are a we
and you are only a you”

near Zebrek,next to the brick
. factory,i spit sputum unto
the dusty ground watching
the steam from it,near the
ploughed fields,near the coop
farms sorrounded by louspeakers
playing martial music,here spolenska
tells me that she cant take it anymore
that shes going back to the steppes
past pilsen, and brno,
past india and beyond
back to lemuria,back to
the giant continent when Ceylon
touched the mainland
to sweet-scented Ceylon
the centre of the world,

i put on my wig and cape
wanting to follow like a brown-haired
child

,the fog in the woods has
made mistakes more difficult to correct,
cars appear and disappear, headlights
like strange lanterns,the
turrets of mystic passage
the bridges silent at night…

I can hear the black
river at night thru the filtered
woods,sound of woodthrush
and of owl and the mushroom pickers

,”the woods are correct” she says
spolenska sleeps,in her sleep she tosses and turns,dreaming that
she is awake,that it is brightbright sunlight,

then she floats
above malastrana ,by the black
tower….away,away…

IT’S raining,the fog congeals
drops bitter drops like tears
horses cough in the damp wet air

my soul curls and autumn
leaves grow from my long thin
hair

a siren calls,i am covered in silicate
dust,in petroleum products, in mercury
and chrome,the love of the engine
room and steelbeams,
hold my heart how shall i survive your loss,

the vacation you have decided
to take from the planet, that creaks
and murmers,she announces to me
one day that she a cancer of the bone after work she will have it checked out a short stay in hospital, an operation
some hungarian watered down morphine
they’ll replant the bones of her
with something better,teflon,the entire
skeleton bone by bone,and she will
made brand new
and stainless steel
and her smile will remain
spolenska will remain

quixotix this place is,chimeral,purple
violet,the sunsets burst like pipes
and are not repaired,it is not a question
of right or fair in this place or sleep

the ghost of stalin sits
at the top of the stairs
wearing a bankers hat and monocle
accompanied by virgins in diaphanous gowns
thru which their nipples show

and all thruout the hall of mirrors
a symphony plays a sad lament
while drop dead girls in buckskin tights
drink gold champagne in paper cups

“yulchka! yulchka! a baritone cries while the mad russian fiddler plays a tip top aria from the …
your girlish soul has been touched by fear
and calls are everywhere
and from these ceilinged walls eyes appear
and there is laughter from the bowling halls

the skin of the sun nauseates me
dry,redolent,loose hanging
the way old skin is loose,redolent with evil intent
roasted with worry and desire i feel sugar seep into my blood promeathean-bound spolenska rides now,mongolian like back to the planet of love
beating large harpy wings
her face is toasted
she is sphynx,talon blessed
she carves fissures on my skin
scars my liver and pancreas i have cut the rope to her thickness
i am used up
with no return to worry

while spolenska sleeps
in flight high above the smoggy
plains america crackles with
o.j.,with trials and vials
gales of constant canned laughter
blow the cities wide open teenaage girls and their mothers

talk of nothing
zero is opened for the nth
with constant mathematical
precision

the evil princess of eternal blonde happiness
rolls her eyes upwards in mock orgasm
rolls soft canned peas beneath the mattress of democracy, &a voracious spirit
lifts up,and fear rides an open wave
blonde and blue-eyed she perches

witnessing.

Rewritten Prague
Aug21/2006
Nick Mancuso