from Metamorph

Mängilik Jel (The Eternal Wind)

a couple of months ago i was called the Disgrace of the Great Kazakh Nation
just because someone saw me on the street with my long hair /fabulous, by the way/
also perhaps because i was pretentious, obnoxious and happy
on the phone with someone
saying andrey i love you too
it’s impossible to remember it all
life has gifted me so many loved ones
gifted—or simply overloved, overdosed me
that’s why i walk on air without thinking
without looking back
torn from the ground i float in exaltation
a cozy levitating piece of the universal seacalf

i don’t want to say i was offended, on the contrary, i thought suddenly
oh how i would want to be the Disgrace of the Great Kazakh Nation
how i would love to feel my unworthiness, my shame
oh how i would want this Greatness to be the diffused evenlight
so i could live as a deplorable particle of this Great Free Nation
in which it would be impossible not just to say this phrase
but to think it
physically think it
with one’s brain to think it
so that the whole system would crash at the tiniest hint of such a thought

but i don’t live as a particle i just walk through the city
through my luminous and windy capital
and i think only this wind will remain eternally
after us and after the grandchildren of our children
and after common sense love cities and even after poetry
having become the only possible poetry
eternal poetry

i walk past the steep useless wheelchair ramps
under the infinitely beautiful sky
you could admire it for hours
but most go to the Left Bank and admire skyscrapers
i put on sunglasses and walk
i don’t remove them from my face even when it’s cloudy out
even, sometimes, at night
not because of pure peacockery
but because i don’t want to embarrass anyone with my gaze
because when i look i see
but nobody likes to share secrets
especially if they are fears
and surely their plans didn’t include showing off their deformities
maybe that’s why they prefer to answer with fight
or flight; but more often with aggression
just because they can’t let me go on with this information
i don’t know why and, more importantly, for what
i was given this power
what is its purpose, and does it even have one
i walk through the city and this power syncs with my steps
peeks into souls
then gossips
chats with me
maybe they feel it too
maybe they even fear it
then they feel ashamed of their fear and fume
then they realize that it’s i who is to blame

oh please let me be the Disgrace of the Great Kazakh Nation
i’ll give everything i have and what i don’t have i’ll get
just make me the Disgrace of the Great Kazakh Nation

to you i appeal, my poor,
careworn, mixed up kazakh
to you, my cripple
as you pump your traumas from the ground
oh hey, i say
i tell you hey
my every-tribesman
my most powerful one
my great kazakh clans
my shapyrashty
jalaiyr-kannly
my naiman
my arggyn qypshaq
my kerei qonnyrat uaq
jetiry baiūly noggai
i greet you and i love you
oh let us all make an effort
join forces intentions dreams
i’m sure together we will succeed
let’s roll?

tri

two

bir

i don’t know of a better idea to bring to life
than the idea of making me the Disgrace of

The Great
Kazakh
Nation




A Metamorph

How odd it is to worry about Kazakh in Russian,
to be nostalgic for kymys after Lambrusco,
to keep an eye on the skinny in the tight

circle of preferences. To write düken, the store, on the right of
the name, instead of the genitive, dükeni, on the left. From
the land of Prometheus, not letting one reach the Caspian waters,

flamingoes’ wing-beats blow as the pink dawn wind.
Forgive me my questionable bilingualism,
it’s just that söz, the word, breaks through this limbo,

and then it slinks back because of the lack
of education. Söz sticks to the palate as sediment.
Touching it with the tip of the tongue, i feel sweet

childhood memories return: thick and soft fur
which i worry as i listen to stories about the Prophet, and there
is the key thing about äje, my grandmother, and should one sit next to her,

she’d put on her glasses that lay on the shelf.
Then she would take down Quoran Karim in the edition, which already
at that time was not meant for resale.

It had that line: made for the sake of Allah,
not for sale. i remember that “bismillah-i rahman-i rahim”
works well for night terrors. The smell

of that fur sometimes returns in my sleep, still it has stayed
in my blankets, and that’s what gifts me my dreams.

maybe to that smell, having wrapped myself in kilometers
and years, i returned home to truly
mourn my grandmother and my desolate childhood.
to stop those two phantoms from prowling after me
to obsession, from catching up with my clumsy shadow.
perhaps this is why now like scales i shed rhymes,
capital letters, but the punctuation
as bird’s tracks on the fresh snow
does not disappear immediately but as you see it disappears
____________ not immediately but as you see ____________
this spreads the legs of time
this is how a new year is born
and it approaches me as january as washed out highway markings
as a slovenly provider of unofficial transportation services
throwing ashes inside the car
janym-ai shybyn janym-ai
oh my dear my winged soul-fly
she says it will fly out of the window over your shoulder into the past
janym-ai shybyn janym-ai
and if you are an entomologist then catch it and don’t forget your pins
janym-ai shybyn janym-ai
my amber the frozen honey
janym-ai shybyn janym-ai
buzzzz it sweeps buzzes off with a buzzzz
as the tooth of the famous arkharly pass
is treated this year using drills, blasts
and excavators
as kazakh songs are treated with kazakh lounge
treat me nasty with the same stuff
i will never make sounds as sweet as a gäkku-gäkku
gäkku-gäkku cries the translucent steppe
gäkku-gäkku the cough approaches
gäkku-gäkku-gäkku-hey hey hey-gäkku-hey-hey
multivoicedness of my memories unravels
the seams of lucid memories rip out
of lucid piercing splintered memories
bottled to ensure inner security but
drills, blasts and excavators but
düken on the left instead of dükeni on the right but
the surviving söz swimming across the styx but
my winged soul-fly janym-ai shybyn buzzes off with a buzzzz but
i have now acquired those pins




02/15

my february came for me light-handed we lay suspended on the river drowning in sky
the bridge rustled and dogs barked at it i lay on my back with a cigarette in my mouth as my eyes dissolved in the sun
i thought that i should stop bending the line of the horizon
that love drains the heart
that the crosses others bear are not your crosses isn’t it simple
you can just get up stake them in the snow and walk to the origin of the spring
who said you can’t burn down bridges i’ve got my dynamite
i am the one who built this one i mangled myself i broke myself
i am the one who tuned it supported it abided the turnpike traffic of painful misunderstandings
i destroyed it because i loved it more than life
i destroyed it because there was more to life
i destroyed it because the air is warmer and spring shimmers up through the soil
i destroyed it because the birds have returned and they are screaming about me
i destroyed it because the snow under my feet whispers about me
i destroyed it because the wind itself sings about me
i destroyed it because it is so easy to be happy happiness is a flick—like on
off—the switch is yours the finger is yours but instead you’re walking around fucking with everyone’s brain
i destroyed it because completely different poems are stirring inside of me
i have to take them out
see what’s there before they burst out of me like a xenomorph
i destroyed the bridge because i wanted to be free from the need to look
back
i destroyed it because i have dreams of the traditional Kazakh toi and i see the newlyweds
standing mournfully listening to the toasts and cheers of grannies nannies grammas papas nanas babas mawmaws inlaws atashki tatashki boleshki agashki kudashki you got it
i destroyed it because i have dreams of grannies dancing up a storm on the tables in carnival
costumes in feather boas glitter dresses and all the burlesque fancies and under the table lies
the MC tamada beaten to death with his microphone
the grandkids don’t stay on the sidelines either they shake their bodies suspended from circus wires flying around in superhero historical figure costumes in terrifying kid-unfriendly Tibetan masks and amulets
grannies dumping sarkyt, the party leftovers, into shopping bags printed with skulls made of kurt
with oil-dripping five fingered hand and the BeshbarMakerPro logo
grammas in their kishemek head dresses with a ring of khazi sausage instead of a chain on their necks
the poster of yermek tursunov’s film shal the old man
heirloom quilt with the apple logo
anything goes as long as it’s totally swagalicious yet stylized with traditional national sentiments
i destroyed my bridge because people aren’t required to live up to my expectations it’s true but
if they don’t they can just go fuck themselves
i destroyed it because the other day i again became the reason for the birth of a new sodomite and my shoulders are covered in bruises
i destroyed it because i suddenly recognized my own worth and hell what a fantastic feeling
to know how much you’re worth and to give no fucks i have myself and we are amazing
i destroyed it because i should have learned a long time ago to cross people off and format
my hard drive
i destroyed it because in actuality nobody needs anybody else and is not needed ever
i destroyed it because i wanted to see the minister of culture stammer while reading
the poems of yaroslav mogutin
i destroyed it because my not-so-long-ago islamicized relatives will never understand me and not even want to for to understand another is hard mental work they are lazy it’s easier not to
i destroyed it because a person i loved smashed a guitar in my house and the splinters sounded better than his two and a half songs and i was left with the cuff-protector—i’ll make a bracelet of it
i destroyed it because ginsberg told me to and whitman told him to and i trust them more than i trust my own mother
i destroyed it because while i was getting ready to go to the new gay club over the halal restauraunt with a guy who hated my poems i asked him what do you want from life and he said i wanna dance
i destroyed it because now in order to reach me you will have to build a bridge
with your own two hands and i promise you it will be hard work
i destroyed it because when i see from my balcony that enormous burning inscription
Astana Is My Fulfilled Dream i automatically say go to hell
i destroyed it because this year the kazakh khanate is turning five hundred fifty years old and i am only thirty and i see no difference neither the former nor the latter matter
i destroyed it because i refuse to suffer and something important is clearly
breaking through




Balkhash Dreams

Come out to the tide. See the сurved banks.
Water ribs breaking on the sand.
The slab of sky above you drowns in bliss.
You can ask: nege? Why? The answer is around you.
Seagulls intrude into my notes; dive
down into the greatest of your Fish Sundays.
If this is the peak, and we are the mountaineers of time,
how long will our memory live under its pulse,
how long will the photo albums shake in elderly hands,
turning over faces as fragile moths
leaf through evening stars.

Lips touch lips inked onto the wrist.
Where your dream begins is the springwell of autumn
that trembles in the air over the stream of thoughts
that ripples timidly under the wind of impressions or
Illusions or sweet slumber or is this the River Ili again as it
desalinates the childhood that washes over the pebbles of oblivion.
The salt of your skin leaves no cracks,
And on it grows the spent breath of a running start.

The dead language tosses and turns on the tongue
Like the fae peri that slumbers on Katie’s new album
She dreams of Coca Cola poured into a dombra
As a disheartened bard Asan walks Nurzhol Boulevard
As Chronos with a Tamerlanish limp
Carries kobyz-maker Korkyt like Diogenes in an oil drum.

A People with History. Tamyry Teren. Profound Roots.
Wide steppe—first and foremost the unreachable,
chimerical horizon, the splitting of the gaze,
diffusion of attention. The kind of absence
that lets you see clearly into yourself.
The spatial resignation of assigned boundaries,
the unthingness which uncovers the seams.
The ability of speech to sprout,
grow into the block stone of limits with the wisdom of weeds,
with surrender, inaction, non-intervention.
Let the seagull land on the scrapyard of variants
and choose from the facets of multiplicity.

Wake up with the weight of an empty pocketbook,
wash off salt and sleep and shake off sand.
See the bridge that’s striped with moving inbetweens,
starched spots, blind linens, white hordes
of unborn snowflakes.
Walk to the empty stadium, unfold
a battle on the freshly cut lawn.
Ascend the absence of desperation’s spectators;
climb to the top; to the limelight; to the stage.
Sing as a mute wave, place a palm
over my trembling heart. Hold
safe tenderness in your lungs.