PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

[I received a comment from Lady A on a poem I had written about "Comrade" Lenin, and was so flattered that I became quite verbose in my reply.  Then, I thought, this reply was somewhat autobiographical; and, as I am hospitalized without a clue how long I will survive this present affliction, I thought this might give my seven grandchildren and two great grandchildren a clue on who this old fart, Starward, was.]

Thank you, and I am flattered beyond words that a Poet of your stature on this site would visit this poem.  I happen to believe that Lenin's primary motivation was to avenge his older brother's execution---hanging, after an attempt on the life of Alexander III, father of Nicholas II---and he found Marxism brought him a ready-made cadre of flatterers and sycophants (including his horse-faced wife; one sees her picture and understands why he also installed his girl friend in an apartment in the Kremlin after his Bolshevik Party came in) only too happy and eager to help him create a Revolution---they not realizong that his ambitions dovetailed with theirs only temporarily.  After the Romanovs and those with them were martyred (the brutal bastards that were appointed as their executioners even shot Alexei's dog), Lenin learned rather quickly that the Bolsheviks new little more about how to govern than the Romanovs did:  he quickly instituted War Communism, and then the NEP (which he described as state capitalism).  His last years in power were filled with the fear that Maria Romanov (who was the most socially accessible of the Grand Duchesses; during their imprisonment in the ominously named "House of Special Purpose" in Yekaterinburg---now the site of an Orthodox Church built to honor of the Romanov martyrs---the youngest of the guards became her boy friend, temporarily; and when Lenin heard of it, he hit the ceiling), whose body could not have been accounted for by the executioners, had somehow survived and would re-enter Russia at the head of Kolchak's forces and rid Russia of the Bolshevik inhumanity.  He had many sleepless nights, wondering if Maria was on her way back in (one wonders if she would have brought her boy friend, Ivan Kleschev, to the throne with her; Ivan had already declared, in the presence of witnesses, that he intended to rescue her:  did Lenin fear Ivan had succeeded?).  Lenin died in torment; in his last moments, he fell back on Orthdox liturgy whispering "Forgive me."

   As for Joe Stalin, I agree:  his atrocities far exceeded those even of the Bavarian Corporal.  He made even more martyrs of the Orthodox Church than Lenin did---ironic, considering Joe Stalin had been a seminarian when he first discovered Marxism and met Lenin.  They say he only feared two women---Krupskaya, the horse-faced, and Alexandra Kollentai who had replaced Inessa Armand in Lenin's affections.  He appointed Kollentai as the first female ambassador in history, and Krupskaya had a chocolate factory named after her following her demise.  They tell me that one of the chocolate bars has been named for her, and can still be obtained today.

   Mein Kampf taught in police academies?  Perhaps as an example of not to write.  I read large passages of the Bavarian Corporal's book quoted in Shirer's Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich (best paper I wrote in high school; ten pages minimum required, I brought in fifty-one).  I can only imagine what Mein Kampf would have been if Hess had not proofread and edited it as Hitler dictated it to him in Landsberg Prison in 1924.  And Hess was not that eloquent a writer, either.

   As for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, my father (by adoption) would have been the third Marine landed on the Japanese main island (his death certificate, and those of the other Marines who would have been landed in that first wave, had already been filled out by the captain of the battleship Nevada.  Three days prior to the landing, the ship stopped dead in the water, swung around, and begin heading away from Japan at full speed.  He said the ship was literally vibrating with all its boilers lit, and trying to achieve top speed.  The scientists who built "Little Boy" had badly overestimated the blast radius, so the battleship was told to get out of there fast.  Harry Truman, in choosing to drop the bomb, saved my father's life.  Then Truman sent him to school on the GI bill, and my father became one of the area's top road surveyors.  During my first summer job, the summer after my paper on the Shirer book, people he had trained described him as an artist of exquisite skill and finesse on the transit.  My father turned an angle once, and once only:  subsequent surveys, some of which I participated in, never found an error.  My father adopted me and gave me a surname that goes back to colonial New England, and then beyond that to the time of Henry VIII and his girl friend, Anne Boleyn.  One of my great grandfather's paternal cousins, an astronomer, discovered what he believed to be a nebula (and is now known to be a galaxy) which still bears his name in the astronomical calendars.  His surname, and mine.  So then one might ask, why Starward and not my own name?  I am unworthy to be in that family due to the grief I caused my father in the seventies.  I grew my hair long, and wore bell-bottom jeans everywhere; at college, I walked to class barefoot (as did a good many of my classmates) or, at most, flipflops.  Though I was a nerd, I was, at least, a fashionable one.  (In the summer after freshman year, on the day after my birthday, I drove my paternal grandmother to our home for my party.  I had flops on, and she asked how could I stand that strap between my toes.  I said, "You know, you're right" and tossed them into the backseat, and, barefoot, drove her home, much to her amusement and my mother's distinct shock.  I was always glad to piss my mother off.)  In some ways, I had all that because Harry Truman had chosen to drop the bomb.

  I have been quite verbose because I was so flattered, as I said above, that a Poet of your accomplishment chose to visit this poem.  I very much appreciate the gesture, and your comment.  Stop by any time.