aubade (enjoy your bath)

soft had been the first foot to cross the threshold that year
so in her honour he dabbed whiff behind his stale ears
and tho’ he weren’t dish enough to possess an std
he still sought to ward off the past with its very near teeth
and risk love on the rebound

swilling eschatology in the bottom of root beer floats
he said, “i know what i’m not but still would you let me drain your moat?
for i would pass those tensile battlements you have stacked there atop
and take you on the sectional and the morrows yonder that”
a new love begging to be found

it said, “hey! do you live here?
won’t you raise a toast to this tired earth with me?
yeah, let’s do, let’s begin anew, jowl to cheek”

the maiden of maidan’s flight had taken her from war to here
she said, “there must never be other winters on fire, nor my soul in fear
no dissolving in silence for the wronging key in the wronging slot
no waitings upon landings, yeah, let’s pop the champers and pity buss
if we don’t live then we can’t die”

she held up a twig waiver in lieu of divining his soul by rote
fallen leaves bespecked her face with their many hidden unsung notes
there was no pretext other than her, “looky here, the branch with no words”
he begged, “don’t be a dream”, she said, “you left behind your birch switch”
finally! a pretext to which to hie

love said, “hey! could we live here?
won’t you raise a toast to this tired earth with me?
yeah, let’s do, let’s begin anew, jowl to cheek”

in moscow there is a street of the same name and apartment tier
as the one in leningrad where a clock strikes twelve for any who will hear
is it time for a new year? let’s unlearn the restrainment of our true feelings!
embrace the irony of a fate that flies in the face of impermanence
so they bathed together unashamed

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2016

65 thoughts on “aubade (enjoy your bath)”

    • Thank you for the kind words regarding my little poem, lostinmist! And as for the following this blog enjoys, much of that is down to Tati’s hard work and magnetic personality. I’m just along for the ride! 😀

      Liked by 1 person

  5. Lovely Tony, I had never seen this side of you. Your writing flows perfectly and in such a different way to your comic strips (and not just because of the length). I am glad I remembered that you had other websites and went to fetch their contributions as I was not seeing anything new under crumble cult.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    • You say such lovely things about my writing, Geetha. Thank you so much! And, yeah, while Crumble Cult is certainly as important to me as Unbolt, it does get updated rather less frequently. I’m afraid it does take me quite a chunk of time to put together a strip these days. 😛

      Liked by 2 people

    • Welcome and I am glad I am following you here now to get updated. As I am taking up a new role I have also updated my WP options to get weekly updates in my inbox. That way I read everything from the blogs I follow in the email and just go around distributing the likes afterwards with a brief look at the picture and the beginning of the post. I used to do that with only a couple of blogs before but now I have done it with all the blogs 😀

      Liked by 2 people

    • I think it would be good. I realised yesterday that I was not getting enough time to write because I was reading too much on the spur of the moment the blogs I follow with only a few of them in the email system. I then decided to change them all to the email system and for some of them weekly only. It works better that way and I got to write my poem which I will publish shortly and hopefully I will be able to finally finish the essay I started.

      Liked by 3 people

  6. Sounds like you’ve been influence by Russian Literature Tony.

    The brings a perfect dish to the table so as us humans talk about this incredible work of poetry.
    Tony, I think you and I belong in a different planet world. You are such an amazing poet and artist. I know I have told you this before but you are. 🙂

    Thank you sir for you always being you. 🙂

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    • Charlie, you’d be right. 🙂

      I’ve been reading through The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. It was another recommendation of Tati’s, and it’s been quite an entertaining read. I have no idea how it’s going to end!

      And, hey, we belong in the same world. I dig your writing style. At face value it seems to be just surreal imagery but when you look closer… well, you realise that there’s a lot more going on beneath the surface.

      I’m a big fan of your work! I’m going to keep reading for as long as I have eyeballs. 😛

      Liked by 2 people

    • I have not read the The Master of Margarita. I’ll save it to my list of books to read. 🙂

      You understand the world through your perspective views.

      You make the world a better place.

      P.S New poem posted. A David Bowie poem. You’ll love it a lot. 🙂 🙂

      Liked by 2 people

  7. I love Russian literature and you’ve captured that style here brilliantly Tony. I like how the language changes in the last stanza suddenly it’s all a bit more serious forcing the reader to rethink the whole poem.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

  9. This is excellent. Love it. Your poems often feel like they are filled with these neat jump-cuts that function in very interesting ways.

    Question: are you referring to that famous Russian-Soviet New Year’s movie where a guy drunkenly stumbles into a woman’s apartment in another city using his key? Can’t remember the name of it. The apartments looked identical, even though they were in separate cities, because Soviet architecture.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

    • Thank you, Gregory! And, yes, you’re right! It is loosely based on that film. Actually, it’s two different films.

      The first one is the one you speak of, and is called The Irony of Fate (sometimes Enjoy Your Bath! or With Light Steam). I love this movie. Tati introduced me to it very recently, and I’m glad she did. 🙂

      The other film is a documentary called Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom that I watched on Netflix. It was an eye opener, and it made me feel a bit fearful for Tati’s safety over there. Of course, she is safe but still… 😛

      Liked by 4 people

    • Yikes! Hope she stays safe. The fighting, as I recall my Russian and Ukrainian friends telling me, is largely restricted to one area. I hope that’s true, and cause for consolation.

      The documentary I’d never heard of. Will check it out this weekend.

      Liked by 4 people

    • That’s my understanding too, although I could be wrong about this. The documentary is quite a moving one but deals with the conflict exclusively from the side of the protesters. It doesn’t really touch on what the politicians were doing during that time (if anything). Still, very highly recommended. 🙂

      Liked by 3 people

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