Guitars don’t fuck

We yelled to guitars in kitchens,
drank wine and randomly fucked.
Women admired us wistfully,
silently smoked and day-dreamed,
tenderly beckoned to fuck them.
Anyone done with the singing, gone fucking,
was quickly replaced by another,
only the grimy necked guitar
would stay, ’cause
guitars don’t fuck.

Some were stuck in the “Doors”.
We loved them, but we didn’t sing them –
their “errr” didn’t go with
port and pale dopey booze
in the three-liter glass cans
from cheap juice of bloody pomegranates
ditched right there where we bought it –
what a joyful fuck up!

We sang “Kalinov most”,
we sang “Kino”, that was over,
we sang “Aukcion”, we yelled “Nol”,
suddenly switching to “Laertsky”…
Women would sulk,
they did not like to bouncy fuck
to the cheerful outbursts of obscenities,
nor to soulfully fuck to the sad songs
with all the anatomy.

The plywood kitchenette couches –
squeeze into the corner.
Seats could be lifted, and there
were flour and sugar.
Old greasy gas stoves,
painted flake-wood cupboards
with transfer-pictures of anything
from flowers to Crocodile Gena.
Wobbly chairs and stools,
and worn out linoleum floors,
shabby brown-colored plinth,
would you fuck in that setting?!

And yet they – those women of ours –
did make it alright.
Our guitar did help them, and help us
(herself, she wouldn’t fuck).
Our wine did help us in what
we tried to escape from…
“For those alive, it’s just a break on the way,
for the dead – it is home”

Then we dragged ourselves out,
which was called: “to have dignity”,
having fucked – you fuck off.
Hard to take off into impenetrable darkness,
into the chill, weak and sober and freezing,
but a hundred times worse – to stay.

I’m not giving names of the districts, or streets,
or subway stations, or gateways,
or penny-wise faces bargaining “how much?”,
of the dark booths with icon-lamps shining on booze,
nor any numbers, or last-names, or dates,
or distinctions.

(original)