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@ 27.105 MHz: Partiya Lenina, Sila Narodnya; Inessa Armand Complains About Her Lover
A devil's mustache on his bulbous head;
a style of clothes from which all dignity
(if any was there, once before) has fled:
the threadbare three-piece suit, the shabby shoes,
and stench of woodsmoke belched from leaking flues---
contributed much to the false impression
made by this failed lawyer whose sole profession
and (if he had a soul) his soul's desire
was to plunge Russia into Revolution---
the platform from which he could, then, exact
vengeance on all those whom he had long hated
(hatreds he never was short of, nor lacked;
and for that, many suffered in profusion---
tortured, starved, shot, strangled, or burned by fire).
I first met him just after the Titanic
struck ice (while showng off for wealth, of course).
Krupskaya's face belonged, more, on a horse.
His talk did not cease, even while undressing.
His foreplay was, frankly, an awkward guessing
dully prolonged until he mounted me---
as if ascending some high podium
from which he would deliver a great speech.
He thrust and panted, but was never sated:
human pleasure eluded his short reach.
I could not help but listen in bored silence
to Bolshevik talk that accelerated
as he delightledly anticipated
infliction of his fantasies of violence---
those would have struck a hired assassin dumb.
He could not go the distance, nor could come.
Toward love, as toward all else, his attitude
was just one more trite Marxist platitude.
Starward
