Borscht poems on Hello Poetry

James Bradley McCallum Mar 2013

it was warm
for a winters eve
unusually warm
but damp very damp
birthing a persistent
midnight mist that
crawled over everything

avenging
halogen angels
flitted down from
streetlight perches
skidding through
bare limb bars
of broken trees
roped in by sagging
telephone wires

skulking
seraphs
joined
ebullient
neon auroras
laughingly
brake dancing,
jittering away on the
pock marked rims
of hip hop streets

the fine drizzle
descending from the
black urban heavens
splayed holy water
over the bodies
of anything
that moved; and
layered mounds
of transparent beads
on all inert things
chiding those yolked
to weighty burdens
to seek relief of
a much needed
breaking point

our
slouching city
mired in a cycle
of a prolonged
historical rut
beavers away
to lift the lid
on tomorrows
tipping point
in a desperate
labor to stop
tripping over
itself...

a dinged up
Sentra’s
flashing spinners
twisted round
our dark corner
nearly clipping
our troop

inside the
yakking low-riders
scuttled along,
their hidden ***** eyes
cruising the stoops
and cyclone alleys
scoping opportunities
for the next
jolly hustle
to feed
a growing
angry fix

tonight
Mother Nature was
running a *****
to the wall third shift,
manufacturing a
stationary low
of gagging precip
churning volumes
of Vulcan smoke
conjuring
convective spirits
from all the
dim places

emanations lit
the balmy January air
rising from
stubborn gray patches
of despoiled snow
and rancid ponds
organic gutter water
composting
in distilled pools
awaiting leakage
through flotsam
clogged sewage grids

Paterson’s
litter police
could close the
city’s budget deficit
if all infractions
were properly cited
and paid in this
neighborhood

this queer elixir of
rising vapors from
evaporating snow
escaping the cracks
lining the bowels of
mordant streets
joining descending
screens of billowing mists
blurs boundaries of light,
diffusing temporal time

people and things
lose precise definition
reducing sentient beings
to moving silhouettes of gray
photographic negatives
framed in dribbling palettes
of pastel hues

our
5th Ward mission
planted in the
hub of a neighborhood
still holding on...

Old WASP’s
of St. Paul’s
long ago
winged away
from this
princely
Episcopate
principality

the abandoned
conical nest, its
chambers filled with
the mud of 50 dead rectors
precariously clings
to its shivering
boulevard corner

its endowment depleted
its earthly treasure rusting
grandiose Tiffany windows
remain the last legacy of an
opulent faith now
shamefully rattling away
in moth eaten frames

once icons of
adulatory reverence
the final sparkling asset
of a distressed religion
begs to be monetized
by flummoxed vestrymen
yearning to extend
a stewardship
over a dissipating
ESL flock

distress in the hood
parades down Broadway
in all directions

a few blocks east
a shuttered
Barnert Hospital
transfigured into an
urban enterprise zone
for health-care privateers
working overtime to
extract federal
corporate welfare
rent subsidies
dutifully fulfilling
fine print obligations of
Obamacare legislation

Old Mayor Barnert’s
namesake synagogue
once hard by
City Hall
is long gone
its absent footprint
now centered by
a thriving
White Castle

near Broadway’s end
on the outskirts
of Eastside Park
Art Deco Emanuel Temple
the last anchor
for the city’s Judaism
lies vacant
awaiting a renewed
purpose

fraught with irony
a thriving Islamic Center
stands juxtaposed
across the street
from the old
Hebrew Temple

we wonder what
will emerge
from the
hallowed chrysalis
of decommissioned
Emanuel?

rumors of a
Great Falls Art Center
trickle like a leaking faucet
failure to secure a mortgage
in the post credit
bubble pop economy
dams the possibly
of a new centers
coming to fruition

will
the city’s
changing
demography of
reverent Muslim’s
genuflecting
across the street
take time away
from prayer to
patronize a venue
offering decadent
bourgeois jazz and
risqué reviews
of retro Borscht Belt
vaudeville?

when Constantinople
became Istanbul they
converted the Christian
churches into mosques

when the Inquisitioners
drove the Moors from
Granada they converted
the Grand Mosque to
the Cathedral of the
Incarnation

what incarnations
will this city’s
twilight bring?

As Byzantine
begets
Constantinople
begets
Istanbul
the links
in the Silk Road
spanned west
to the new world
of mechanized looms
powered by
Great Falls
raceway water
and a distribution
and procurement
chain anchored
by the Morris Canal

Capitalist
modernity
begets
our Silk City
it also bespeaks
its demise

in the courtyard
of St. Paul’s
a muffled chorus
trawls the thick air

a posse of pimps
done wrangling
their stables
of $5 ******
sing reveries to
the evening haul

midnight lullabies
of corner crooners
lift a Capella hosannas
from the dark armpit
of an alley behind
the Autozone

“i said
you say
what can make
me feel this way
my girl”

juiced pimps
cashin in
livin large on
a skanks
50 cent haul

the trade in flesh
of distressed
human capital
remains a
growth industry

Music Selection:
Temptations, My Girl

jbm
3/1/13
Oakland

Part 1 of extended poem Silk City PIT. PIT is an acronym for Point In Time. PIT is an annual census American cities conduct to count the homeless population. Paterson NJ is nick named The Silk City.

Carlo C Gomez Mar 2023

Dogs of Chernobyl ☢️

descendants of those left behind,

they found fellowship with

a singularly brutal environment,

free roaming meanderers

of a crepuscular exclusion zone,

having trekked into

the camps of liquidators

to beg for scraps,

they nosed into empty buildings

and found safe places to sleep,

stopping at Café Desyatka

for some borscht,

the guides speak only of

visitor or occupant,

there are no tourists here,

only the genetically distinct

#dogs #animals #creation #survivors #genetics #chernobyl #nuclear #disaster

jules Dec 2014

Bubbles

My sisters and I once had a goldfish
whom we, appropriately, named Bubbles.
We would watch him swim around in his little bowl
Ever circling back and forth and back and forth
Until one morning
Bubbles went belly up.
Now, at the mature age of nine,
Death was the Schroedinger’s monster under my bed
With the potential to destroy everyone I loved,
Accompanied by an uncertain actual existence.
My six year old sister, however,
had not quite yet achieved my understanding of mortality.
A quick family meeting ended
once we came to an apt solution;
The mature, responsible, reasonable thing to do
was, of course,
to cover the bowl with a towel,
tell my sister that Bubbles had a "migraine"
and buy an identical looking goldfish as soon as possible.
I wanted to give Bubbles a proper funeral and a casket
But my mother had already flushed him down the drain by morning.
I once heard that the smallest coffins are the heaviest.
I didn't understand.
I was 8 the morning my grandfather passed in his sleep
For years death smelled like bacon burning
and looked like the pain on my father’s face as he tried not to cry in front of us
How could the tiny casket I wanted for my childhood pet possibly compare?
My grandmother followed when I was 10
Death tasted like the cheap borscht at the reception
And felt like my sobbing mother pulling away from my comforting touch
How could the shoe box my best friend and I buried her hamster in make a dent in that kind of grief?
One morning at school they told us our drama teacher
wouldn't be coming back to class
not tomorrow, not ever
Death felt like the crack in my voice as I sang at his funeral
No, the smallest coffins couldn't possibly be the heaviest, I thought.
Until one morning I heard that a baby fell out of the window of an SUV
Onto cold black concrete and was crushed on impact,
My neighbor’s five year old daughter died of brain cancer,
A sleeping seven year old girl was shot by a police officer in Detroit
A three year old boy froze to death in Etobicoke
Until I sat down on a toilet shocks of pain reverberating through my pelvis
and the unborn child I didn’t know was there slipped out
My father once told me that happiness
is when the grandfather dies
then the father
then the son
Tell us again and again that God must’ve needed another angel
But sympathy falls flat when faced with putting your six year old six feet underground
We all want to believe we were not made like this.
In spite of everything we want to believe there is goodness in the world
That even a force as cruel as death would spare a child.
Now, death sounds like my friends calling me every morning for weeks
to make sure I was still breathing,
Feels like some days being smothered
and others not even crossing my mind,
Realizing that there are some ghosts who won’t disappear with dawn.
They told me it could've fit in the palm of my hand.
Looked like a newborn gerbil chewed up by its mother.
Take my hand.
Walk with me through water waist deep,
steel toed boots on our feet and these small coffins on our backs.
We will never feel anything heavier.

Giuseppi Martino Buonaiuto Nov 2014

“Those Onion Dome Cupolas”

Those onion dome cupolas,
Sheer Slavic sublimity,
Instructing us:
Perhaps Peter the Near Great--
Rather than picking a pack of pickled peppers--
Decides to provide us a solid reminder
Of just what Greatness implies.
The near great never so
Great as Greatness requires.
According to a foremost authority
On pre-Mongol Russian architecture:
“Whip me up some beet soup, Bubala.”
Mike Myers, of course,
Doing “Coffee Talk with Linda Richmond!”
Yeah, a bowl of borscht and a plate of pirozhki.
Feed the stereotype: Ivan, Boris & Natasha,
All obviously Down’s-Syndrome-Feeble-Minded,
Pre-Mongolian Idiotic, as we once said.
Our weltanschauung—
Our World View--
As Good Neighbors Reinhard or Wolfgang,
See the business of global politics.
www.wikipedia.com “The framework of ideas and beliefs forming a global description through which an individual, group or culture watches and interprets the world and interacts with it.”
Thank you, Huns--
Wayne Newton singing:
“Danke schön.”
You always,
Always Hungry Huns.
Danke schön, you Campbell Soup
Man-handler-Hungry Huns,
Fueled on Goethe & Nietzsche,
Zoroaster & ***-ner
Germany: A Nation of Militarists & Conquistadors,
Just when the Cold War could have been over so quickly,
So prudently averted by asking one simple question:
When have the Russians ever been the
Aggressive party in any conflict?
Be they simple border disputes,
Or true malice aforethought.
Some Napoleonic,
Or Hitlerian.
It was a simple case of HUAC histrionics.
No, decidedly not.
The Near-Great Peter’s was--
If anything--
An Open Door Policy,
A diplomatic Welcome Mat,
A soft squeeze of one’s ball sac,
Pleasant & promising,
“Mi casa es su casa,
Try the Chicken Kiev.”
No Iron Curtain,
If I might, coin a phrase.
But a strong shot of Oswald Spengler,
Pessimistic & carnelian,
Jogs us to Stalin & Khrushchev,
Brezhnev & Putin--
Putin--Vladimir, of that surname--
Perhaps the scariest
Bond villain, yet.
Putin makes a historical first:
Invasion of Crimea.
Invasion of Ukraine.
Maybe those Cold Warrior masterminds,
Actually did us a favor.
(Come out of the closet, J. Edgar.
A retrospective tribute is in the making?
Tom Hanks playing a likable you?)
Tom Clancy & Company
Whipping us up like smoothies,
To fight the good fight,
Noses to the capitalist grindstone,
Building for Divine-Right Nabobs.
New shrines & tombs,
New Coliseums
& Amphitheaters.
New terrible fears of Ivan.

Third Eye Candy Feb 2013

Yearn Like a Puppet

you cannot finish need.
it fiends in wretched globes of dwarf
swelling to tremendous steam
a Bacchanal of vineyard borscht
a moonlit morsel of demolished dreams...
we serve at the pleasure of the absurd
gilding shadows with clay confetti
and the nictitating membranes of blue crocodiles.
and blank verse.

felling the Yggdrasil, by all means; you maraud the larder
in the night kitchen; nicking blackbird-pies and pinky-russet salamanders
[ the loose farthing ] and the hard liquor... all gone now
your potato sack, rakishly slung from the shoulders of an Atlas, entitled ' Promised Land; betrayed '.

a new map shrugging off old kings from dead valleys
revealing the hour of your worthless estate,
in-lieu of the boundaries of your lost holdings. unhappily -
you inherit the unripe peach
in a hound's mouth.
you slouch rough, slowly
to your beast
of a couch:

there, to remain unholy and due South.

there, to remain unknowing
by all account.

zebra Dec 2020

Borscht Belt Doc

he watched her excitedly
eat **** shaped food
especially eclairs
as she languidly tongued
the white buttercream
from the sides of her mouth

thinking of her
his masturbations
powered the lights
of the Catskills

it wasn't just his profession
it was his obsession

just another horney
borsht belt gynecologist

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=bordchtbelt+humor&docid=608009001296593341&mid=97D5DA384A98BD24BFED97D5DA384A98BD24BFED&view=detail&FORM=VIRE

#old #jews #telling #jokes

Aniscia Mosholder Jun 2010

The House of Special Purpose

For Anastasia

Give patience, Lord, to us Thy children
In these dark, stormy days to bear
The persecution of our people,
The torture falling to our share.
--
When we are plundered and insulted
In days of mutinous unrest
We turn for help to thee, Christ-Saviour,
That we may stand the bitter test.
-Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna Romanov

Weakened by the revolutionists,
they lived their last days out simply.
Cold borscht and cabbage rolls.
The family was herded to the slaughter house.

Precious jewels and ikons sewn into their clothing,
Give strength, Just God, to us who need it.
The baby boy was butchered like a suckling piglet.

Low ceilings and dim light made it hard
to take aim and fire. Tears and prayers collided
with bullets and blood, spattered on the walls.
A thick cloud of smoke and plaster settled
upon a dynasty dead.

She raised herself from the dead,
Clawing, moaning, screaming,
stifled by blood--
Then disappeared, falling into
the abyss of immortality.

D Lowell Wilder Dec 2017

Borscht Belt

I shred the beets.
Heads of red flicks in the bowl
parged of white now rosé, blushes.
To say the word properly is to nestle the
tongue in the church of the mouth the nave
of clucks tucked under the roof of the palate to
squeeze conjoined shushes and birch noises.
To steam to steep
with the lazy roil of the soup.
Do you recall the crunch of the snow outside our dacha?
The days where ice coated crusts cut
galoshes
sloshed.
The tureen beckons with its fractures.
To predict the future merely gaze into the soup.
How is this to see
a winter of bread and shavings
of fibers sewn rough
of tough, tough coughs that spray rose
petals in the dawn?

Some of my favorite poems are Russian - one in particular Я Вас любил by Pushkin still enchants me. It's a heady poem of deep emotion. This is a vegetable-based tribute.

#pushkin #lush #russian #sounds

Giuseppi Martino Buonaiuto May 2016

“Kremlin Gremlins”

About an hour later she slipped
Yuri Andropov into the conversation:
“I have to drop off a blouse at the dry cleaners.”
Suddenly it was May Day &
I’m back in Red Square,
Dwarfed beneath larger than life
Lenin, Engels & Marx mug shots.
Inter-continental ballistic lorry loads
Roll past the reviewing stand, while
Geezer Reds in Ushanka fur hats,
****** on Stoli, reeking of borscht,
Chain-smoke cheap Soviet Belomors.
I share these thoughts, handing
Mrs. Khrushchev the car keys.
Having cowered herself in terror,
Having ducked & covered many
Burial promises & shoe-pound threats,
She gives me a tired babushka smirk.
We are conjugal Cold Warriors,
Both weary now, creeping up on 70,
Skirmishes & brinksmanship behind us.
Tolerant of each other at last;
Lukewarm détente between us.

Maria Mitea Oct 2020

The Poem of Morning Ashes

Came gently sneezing at my turned-up nose
when hiding under the soft wool blanket.

Winter mornings came with promising poetry,
heartening the warm bed and inviting me,
Poetry that smelled like burned wood,
infused with the smell of grey blackish ashes,

Keeping the dress sleeves rolled up,
and the hair with very much care combed
back in a solid hair bun, like a trusty guardian,

My mother,
started every winter morning,
bended on her knees,
like in a pray
in front of winter stove,
like in a pray,
cleaning the stove,

She kept silent while cleaned the ashes,
Ashes, that warmed the house and cooked the food,
Ashes made the hot tea soothe,
Ashes made the popcorn dance and jump,
fly on the floor, and fly on the table
‘till we started popcorn fight,
popcorn flew in many mouths,
popcorn flew everywhere in the warm house.

Ashes of burned wood,
I could not understand,
its fire and heat took care of our roots,
penetrating our hearts like gold dust.

My mother’s silence every day cleaned
the winter stove from burned wood
with devotion and zest,
Getting it ready for a new day fire,
Getting it ready to cook borscht.

#bourscht #winter #stove #poetry #consciousness #eternity #ether #life

marianne Dec 2018

Lawn chair dialogues (or, Reconciling)

I will her to put her feet up, my mother with swollen ankles
She’s been standing all morning in a hot kitchen
making borscht
I bring my lawn chair close
We three are sharing lunch, the breeze
through thick cottonwood shade
cools us

“I would lock him in his room”
says my daughter, “I would kick him in the shins
and spit”

We pretend not to hear, but her words linger and I taste them,
sweet vengeance

“Stop fussing. He’s a crazy old man”
“He’s been your husband for sixty years — he should know better”
“I would hit him over the head with a frying pan”

I watch as my daughter tends to Emo the caterpillar
She adds fresh grass to the jar

“He’s had a hard life”
“We all have pain”
“I would mail him back to Siberia”

Of course she is listening—
always an ear for a good story,
for injustice

“Betrayal is learned”
“So is kindness”
“I would poke him in the eye”

I leave the zwieback for last—always best for last
Butter melts in the hollow

“It is our destiny to learn love”
She does this sometimes, shuts me up like nothing …
“I would wash his brain out with soap and …”

She stands bewildered, jar in one hand
Emo lifeless in the other—
reconciling

So there we are, holding two complicated, conflicting truths. And love is always the answer.

#learn #love

Sam Temple Oct 2015

has the time come?

drums pound loudly
as the last real empire
builds up for one more great war
the final battle
to forever lock oil to the U.S. dollar
to end all hope for cultural variation
to show Russia and China why
we are the world police –
media blackout on Chinese warships
and Russian bombers
as we sit glued to a debate
with no real weight
we sit at the precipice
of history repeating
just call Obama, F.D.R.
but without the polio
to stop him becoming king –
when the first ship sinks
somewhere out in the South Pacific
will we have bombed our own
like the Tonkin Gulf
in order to gain public support
for one more crack at the draft
will it be those rascally men from the red menace
dropping our own stolen technology
on the heads of our sons
and combat ready daughters
will Russian destroyers invade the coastline
like we did in Normandy
to stop school shootings
and teach us all how to make borscht
do we actually get to utilize 50 year old
nuclear missiles
in the name of peace
and better trade rates –
the 40 years of my life
we have played in the Middle-East
hit and run, bomb and apologize
innocent civilians as collateral damage
robotic drones keeping tally…
will I get to see
in my lifetime
the horrors that are only properly expressed
on grainy History Channel video –

Lawrence Hall Mar 2018

Russians Under Our Beds (a Russia series, 66)

For Our Special Prosecutors,
Who Guard and Guide Us

Oh, borscht! Those pesky Russkies under my bed
Were marching around all night, changing my votes
Beaming mysterious rays through my sleepy head
And snooping through my lesson plans and notes

They programmed my radio with Marx and Lenin
Plastered a poster of Putin to my wall
Sailed Admiral Kuznetzov across my linen
Layered a Petrograd accent over my Texas drawl

The special prosecutor says no further discussions –
Everything’s the fault of those perfidious Russians!

Lawrence Hall Feb 2018

Song of the ****** Boatmen (a Russian series, 17)

(In which good fellowship between Russians and Americans is probably not advanced)

Start the Evinrude – pull!
Grandpa’s Evinrude – pull!

Where is my sunblock? Where!
Over by the sodas – there!

Start the Evinrude – pull!
It won’t start, Dad – %^&!

Where is my +^% phone? Where!
There by your fishing hat - There!

Start the Evinrude – pull!
Grandpa’s Evinrude – pull!

Watch those tree stumps! Where?
&%#ing tree stumps! @#$!

Start the Evinrude – pull!
Grandpa’s Evinrude – pull!

Drift to that cove, now – there!
Cut the engine, now – shhhh!

Where are them fish, then - $#@%!
They ain’t here, Dad – *&^%!

Start the Evinrude – pull!
Grandpa’s Evinrude – &#%&!

*(Chorus fades as the sun sets over Tovarisch Bubba’s Bait, Beer, ‘n’ Borscht)

The gadget's formatting put in lots of italics that I didn't. Only the bits at the beginning and end, in parentheses, should italicized.

— The End —