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Eighty-four. The March holidays unwind…
The road’s spiky puddles sleep with an anxious mind
Beneath the sharp crust of the morning’s brief, thin ice.
A little ship of peeled-off pine-tree bark
Is leaning with a broken mast, a pen’s blue mark,
Frozen in like the «Chelyuskin» in time and space.
The days rustle with felt of tomorrow’s slogans, bold,
Of «uskoreniye», «intensifikatsiya», the stories told,
And click like amber beads of drunken holiday’s grace
On pages of the wall’s tear-off calendar in its place.
A sunbeam, like a thief, slips through the window crack,
Confuses tin-eyed arrows on the clock, throws time off track,
It mixes midday twelve with six pm’s embrace,
Ticks with a dust speck at the bewildered cat’s face,
It pulls me by the collar to the street, with birds so loud,
And dips my face into a ultraviolet waterfall’s shroud.
And when at evening, chimney pipes begin to whisper low
With TV antenna masts pressed to them in a row,
And whimper mournfully like mangy, lonely strays,
Superstitious housewives, looking up from TV’s haze,
Smear sunset’s horizon with Bulgarian pepper’s fiery rust,
Pierce sky’s mourning curtain with their mop handles’ thrust.
And between the threads of patches spreading far and wide,
The stars wink down at us, with velvet polished side.
From one of them, a girl is watching over me,
A girl to whom no tragedy will ever be,
A girl, a devil’s dozen years ahead, unseen,
Unrecognized by me in solfeggio’s routine,
Right on the border where the light and darkness blend…
A girl who gave me back the past I thought was spent,
And took away the future where she was but lent,
A future where she turned out just a passing guest…
A girl who gave me back the past and stole the rest…
From one of them… a girl is watching… over me…
Prompt for SUNO AI
A dream-pop and shoegaze ballad with strong nostalgic and cosmic elements, Male vocal shifts between a warm, filtered, narrative baritone and a clearer, awestruck tone cutting through dense music, The foundation is built on warm, slightly dusty synth pads reminiscent of 80s Soviet electronics and clean, echoing guitars, The song features two dramatic, cascading «walls of sound» (dense layers of shimmering, distorted guitars with reverb/delay) that represent moments of magical, blinding revelation, The arrangement includes subtle, atmospheric sound design (distant children, fuzzy TV), The mood is deeply nostalgic, tender, magical, and ultimately epically sad, blending intimate childhood memory with a sense of cosmic wonder.
Afterword
Afterword… and afterlife’s keen edge,
Like scripting your own final, pre-recorded pledge.
Afterword — it follows the last word,
Afterlife — a realm by death’s hand stirred.
You and I will never write that perfect line,
We can only mock the old design,
In the afterword of silence, thick and deep,
Where our childhood’s afterlife lies fast asleep.
Thirty years, just three days in my sight!
Friend, if I just knew you won the fight!
A bitter aftertaste, a lingering trace,
Of hollow greetings from that time and place.
You and I will never write that perfect line,
We can only mock the old design,
In the afterword of silence, thick and deep,
Where our childhood’s afterlife lies fast asleep.
So many faces have now left the stage,
Classmates resting under earth, a turning page.
Afterword — it follows the last word,
After-fame — a tale that’s never heard.
You and I will never write that perfect line,
We can only mock the old design,
In the afterword of silence, thick and deep,
Where our childhood’s afterlife lies fast asleep.
A keeper of lost time, with no work to do,
Hooked upon the past he’s clinging to.
After-feeling — numbness after fire,
The day past tomorrow, closer to the pyre.
You and I will never write that perfect line,
We can only mock the old design,
In the afterword of silence, thick and deep,
Where our childhood’s afterlife lies fast asleep.
You and I will never write… that line…
We can only mock… the old design…
In the afterword… of silence… deep…
The afterlife… where our childhood lies… asleep…
Prompt for SUNO AI
A grand, slow, and melancholic 80s-style rock power ballad, Deep, resonant, and emotionally strained male baritone vocal, singing strongly rhymed, poetic lyrics, Rich instrumentation: clean, sustained electric guitar motifs, warm and sweeping string sections (cello, viola), piano, solid bass, and slow, deliberate drums, The arrangement builds powerfully with each chorus, featuring a melodic and sorrowful electric guitar solo as the emotional climax, The song ends with a solemn fade-out, The mood is nostalgic, philosophical, deeply sad, and monumentally beautiful, with rhyming lyrics driving the melody.
Our Days
Our days…
The holy inquisition’s feasting once again,
The bonfires of vain glory burn for deafened men,
Who heed the call of gold, and heed the call of sin.
Gas is our dear father, oil our mother thin.
A mourning cypress stands, a monument so grand,
A framed portrait of a man, behind his back,
Holding a guitar and a rifle, cut from life’s track…
A plastic Chinese fake, a cheap and tawdry brand,
A cheap fake of Karlshorst, last century’s faded symbol.
Our days… The holy inquisition’s feasting once again!
Our days… A cheap fake of Karlshorst for modern men!
And Potsdam…
Our days…
The triumph belongs to hack journalists, the worst,
True masters of the linguistic art, of two professions first.
They fall asleep as Guelphs, as Ghibellines awake,
From one lord to the next, their loyalty they shake.
They mesmerize the flock with incantations, foul and thick,
Of Solzhenitsyn’s rotten, stinking, noxious trick.
They slurp the slop and swill right from the master’s feeding trough,
And lick the boots of tomorrow’s lord, with oily, practiced cough.
Our days… The triumph belongs to hack journalists, the worst!
Our days… They slurp the slop right from the master’s feeding trough!
They praise the whip and gingerbread!
Our days…
The middle-aged now vote directly with their heart,
They do not weep into a widow’s cotton art.
Without a pity, they cash out their yearly stash,
To buy a better, foreign-made walkie-talkie in a flash,
To pick some army boots, to haggle for a armored vest.
They send officials, our eternal sorrow’s pest,
To hell, with a ripe curse, a mother-based protest.
They leave — they do not sing. They come back in the lines
Of news reports and «captured town» triumphant signs.
Our days… The middle-aged now vote directly with their heart!
Our days… They come back as a report about a captured part!
Eternal memory…
A cluster of roadside bellflowers, by the way,
Is flooded with red wax and thick molasses’ sway…
And yet, when I see a girl in a spring coat of burgundy,
With a red balloon, and with a fidgety scar’s bend,
Above her right temple, drawing my gaze without end,
I feel, accountless, like in youth, you must know,
My head is spinning, spinning, spinning even so…
Our days… when I see a spring girl…
Our days… my head is spinning like in youth…
Like before…
Our days… The inquisition’s feasting…
Our days… A cheap fake of Karlshorst…
And Potsdam…
Our days… Hack journalists…
Our days… They slurp the slop…
Our days… Vote with their heart…
Our days… A report about a capture…
Prompt for SUNO AI
A sarcastic and shifting art-post punk satire that ends in pure lyricism, Male vocal shifts between a sneering, spoken-sung baritone, chaotic layered shouts, and finally a clean, vulnerable singing voice, The song is a suite of styles: it begins with heavy post-punk/industrial; shifts to grotesque cabaret jazz with clarinet/sax; then to cold martial industrial; before collapsing into silence, The finale is a stark contrast: a simple, beautiful acoustic guitar arpeggio and a tender, sincere vocal delivery, The chaotic choruses return as ghostly, distorted echoes in the final reprise, fading behind the acoustic melody, The mood evolves from bitter and cynical to tragically hopeful and human.
La Ville Blanche
La ville blanche ne fête rien, ne sonne pas,
Elle sort ses enfants de sous les décombres, bas.
Elle sort ses fils, ses filles, de la poussière et des gravats,
Et les compte d’un trait de plume, voilà le contrat.
Quinze noms sont écrits d’un seul et froid coup de stylo,
Un amendement amer à un vieux jeu cruel et beau.
Et combien d’autres suivront, ajoutés à cette ligne?
Une question dans l’air, comme un vin aigre qui signe.
Quinze d’un trait, et combien d’autres à venir?
Quinze d’un trait, le tambour va-t-il finir?
La plume gratte des chiffres, sans pouvoir les guérir…
Trop pour compter, trop pour en souffrir…
Les lignes rouges sont redessinées d’un geste souverain,
Là-bas, derrière les montagnes, sur un sol lointain.
Aux taudis de rêver à la paix qu’ils n’auront pas,
Aux palais d’engraisser dans leurs conforts et leurs appas.
Et dans la vitrine prune d’une rue qui porte un nom,
Un tas de pierre calcaire reflète un lilas, un summum.
Une ambulance «gyrophare», sirène au cri perçant,
Fonce à travers la ville sous un ciel se berçant.
Aux taudis de rêver, aux palais de festoyer,
Tandis que le chagrin plante son levain, son foyer.
La plume gratte les chiffres, ne sachant apaiser…
(Allons enfants… vers un test à briser…)
À quelques centaines de kilomètres de ce lieu de deuil,
Un Français aux cheveux gris, au visage en écueil,
De la vieille Brigade Internationale, une fragile fleur,
Attend à Besançon sa déportation, sa peur.
Il sirote sa vodka russe, touche son insigne «Garde»,
Et dans sa moustache jaunie, un murmure qui darde :
«Non, rien de rien… Je ne regrette rien, c’est tarde…»
Il allume un Belomor froissé, expire un nuage fumé,
Et lance à la chaise vide une dernière pensée :
«Eh bien, mon ami «Texas’… accueille l’invite, hein?
L’accueil est aussi froid qu’il l’a toujours été pour rien…»
QUINZE D’UN TRAIT! ET COMBIEN D’AUTRES À MOURIR?
GRATTÉS SUR PAPIER, LES PALAIS POUR DÉMENTIR!
LA PLUME GRATTE LES CHIFFRES JUSQU'À L’ENCRIER TARIR!
TROP POUR COMPTER! AUCUNE RÉPONSE AU DÉSIR!
La ville blanche ne fête rien… les sort de terre…
Quinze d’un trait… plus de paix sur cette sphère…
«Non… je ne regrette rien…»
«Mon ami «Texas’…»
Quinze… d’un trait…
The White City
The white city holds no feast, it makes no sound,
Just pulls its children from the broken, bloody ground.
It pulls its sons and daughters from the rubble and the dust,
And counts them with a pen, because it’s justice they must.
Fifteen names are written with a single, cold stroke,
A bitter, black amendment to a cruel and ancient joke.
And how many more will follow, added to this wretched line?
A question hanging silent in the air, like cheap, sour wine.
Fifteen with a stroke, and how many more to come?
Fifteen with a stroke, beating on a war-time drum.
The pen keeps scratching numbers on the page, a pointless sum…
Too many to count, too many to overcome…
The lines of red are redrawn with a sovereign’s hand,
Somewhere far beyond the mountains, in a distant, foreign land.
So let the hovels dream of peace they’ll never see,
And let the palaces grow fat in their satiated glee.
[The harmonica returns, playing a twisted, ironic variation of a folk tune.]
And in a plum-dark window, on a street that bears a name,
A pile of shattered limestone reflects a lilac’s flame.
A «blue light» ambulance, with a siren’s desperate cry,
Is rushing through the city, underneath a wounded sky.
So let the hovels dream, and let the palaces feast,
While sorrow plants its bitter, sharp, and everlasting yeast.
The pen keeps scratching numbers, granting neither peace nor rest…
Allons enfants… to a never-ending test…
A few hundred kilometers from that mournful place,
A grey-haired Frenchman with a tired, weathered face,
From the old International Brigade, a fading trace,
Sits in Besançon airport, in deportation’s grace.
He sips his Russian vodka, pulls his «Guard» badge near,
And through his yellowed mustache, words you almost hear:
«Non, rien de rien… Je ne regrette rien, my dear…»
He lights a crumpled Belomor, exhales a cloud of smoke,
And offers to the empty chair a final, whispered joke:
«Eh bien, mon ami «Texas’… accueille l’invite, see?
The welcome is as cold as it has always been for me…»
FIFTEEN with a stroke! And how many more to DIE?
Scratched on paper, while the palaces just LIE!
The pen keeps scratching numbers till the ink runs DRY!
Too many to count! No answer to the WHY!
The white city holds no feast… just pulls them from the ground…
Fifteen with a stroke… and no more peace is found…
«Non… je ne regrette rien…»
«Mon ami «Texas’…»
Fifteen… a stroke…
Prompt for SUNO AI
A raw, angry protest folk ballad with elements of blues and jazz, Male vocal shifts between a gritty, chanting baritone in the verses/choruses and a world-weary, spoken-sung croon in the jazz bridge, Core instrumentation: rhythmic acoustic guitar, mournful harmonica, heavy kick drum, The choruses swell with dissonant electric guitar, The middle bridge shifts to a smoky jazz trio (electric piano, double bass, brushed drums) with a tenor saxophone solo, The song ends in a chaotic breakdown and is ultimately silenced by the sound of a jet engine, The mood is bitter, sarcastic, tragic, and defiant, The lyrics are strongly rhymed, driving the melody and the message.
Farewell
From white and silent mummies I have learned
About your hasty exit, my beloved, my concern.
The trembling nightingales, caught in the chill of May,
Stumbling, for the last time, in your honor tried to play
A farewell symphony in D-minor, cold and grey.
Life turned out not a feast, but just a stinging nettle’s bed.
And though you crushed it with your little heels until it bled,
Until the juice, the bloody green, the calluses were shed,
Proving your invented superiority, widespread,
It only burned more fiercely, scorching hot and red,
You and the blind ones following where you led.
It left upon the skin such deep and scarring lines,
That passersby mistook for wrinkles, cruel designs,
Which made your childhood face, now twisted and confined,
A mask that acid ruined, malformed and maligned.
So what… Rest in peace now,
Goddess of my restless, fevered dreams.
I will not desecrate your memory
With lying, hollow blasphemies.
Who knows, perhaps we’ll soon collide
Upon the steps of one of countless, vast,
And endless, echoing Asgard’s galleries at last.
A pity, but we’ll have nothing left to say…
We’ll have nothing left to say…
It left upon the skin such deep and scarring lines,
That passersby mistook for wrinkles, cruel designs,
Which made your childhood face, now twisted and confined,
A mask that acid ruined, malformed and maligned.
He Was My Friend
What happened to the skinny, hollow-cheeked boy,
Dressed up in a spacious, threadbare, patched-up, grey,
His father’s old greatcoat, so worn out and coy,
Who fell asleep, curled tightly like a child at play,
On a September potato bed, under the sky,
Beneath a whimsical and capricious southern breeze,
Among the chaos of discarded, dirty, yellow piles,
Of tubers lying scattered, fallen from the trees?
Did anybody hear?
What happened to the skinny, hollow-cheeked boy,
All wrapped up in that grey coat, his father’s joy?
Did anybody hear?
He used to be my friend…
Did anybody hear? Some people used to say,
He perished in the second year of war, they’d claim…
While others argued, swore he drank his life away
And froze inside a snowdrift, on New Year’s, what a shame,
Not reaching his old house, just children’s steps away,
The house that stood there stiff, with pine smoke in its frame,
The house he always feared. A magpie, on the fence,
Brought gossip yesterday, a tale that made no sense:
That yesterday’s young athlete married well, and hence,
Now holds a major post, with power and pretense,
Inside the municipal administration’s walls, immense.
Did anybody hear?
He perished in the second year of war?
Or froze inside a snowdrift on New Year’s night?
Did anybody hear?
He used to be my friend…
They gossiped he had married to improve his state,
And turned into a serious official, cold and great.
And then they say his face would twist in awkward spite,
Whenever someone mentioned his old village’s name,
Or names of those he went to school with, all the same,
Back in that distant, half-mythical childhood’s light,
Where once he took a nap upon a potato bed,
Behind some carelessly thrown buckets, crooked, red,
When even in his wildest dreams, inside his head,
He could not dream that twenty paper years ahead,
He’d blow up on a mine and stupidly lie dead,
And drain into the earth, a stream of stupid red.
Did anybody hear?
He turned into a heartless bureaucrat?
Or blew up on a stupid anti-personnel mine?
Did anybody hear?
He used to be my friend…
He blew up on a mine? Instead of turning to
A self-content and well-fed office-rat, a clerk,
In one of second-rate departments, it is true,
Of city management, who’d bow with practiced smirk,
And bring reports up to his worship, the burgomaster?
And on the Sundays, take his sickly, greasy spouse
Out to the dacha, and with Shakespearean forced laughter,
For the hundredth time, would torture her with an old tale,
About a non-existent September, without fail,
When he fell asleep on soft earth, finely tilled,
Perhaps by his own spade, perhaps by a blast concealed,
And, tossing in the black soil, with his strength now stilled,
Complaining of his tired arms, he suddenly could feel
An icy chill, that smelled of potato tops and «champagne»,
And managed to make out a toast from someone’s voice:
«To the coming year, you lads!» What a choice!
And in the end, the fool, he missed the final joys,
The last long episode he loved, the final scene,
Of his beloved «Treasure Island», left unseen.
Did anybody hear?
He, bowing, brings reports up to the burgomaster?
Or feels the icy, final, creeping chill of death?
Did anybody hear?
He used to be my friend…
What happened to the skinny, hollow-cheeked boy,
Dressed up in a spacious, threadbare, patched-up, grey,
His father’s old greatcoat…
Who fell asleep, curled tightly like a child at play,
On a September potato bed, under the sky…
Did anybody hear?
He perished in the second year of war?
Or turned into a heartless bureaucrat?
Did anybody hear?
He used to be my friend…
Only You Won’t Repeat
And once again I’m searchin’ through a crowd of faceless mass,
A thousand bodies passin’, made of wire, smoke, and glass.
I’m scanin’ every profile, breakin’ down each silhouette,
I’m searchin’
Your face.
Searchin’
Your face.
Is that Ivan Tsarevich, polished to a brilliant sheen,
By the razor edge of pompous melancholy, cold and mean?
Or Ivanushka the fool, who’s snorin’ in a gutter’s hold,
Right outside a roadside dive, a story left untold?
But only your face…
I’m searchin’
Your face.
Searchin’
Only your face…
And once again I’m listenin’ to the avalanche of sound,
The nighttime radio ether, spreadin’ static all around,
It smells of strawb’ries, ozone, and of baskets filled with dust,
From the closet, in the corner, covered in a greyish crust.
I’m listenin’
For your voice.
Listenin’
For your voice…
I’m hopin’ to make out your favorite song, the one we knew,