Brooklyn Streets Poetry

The skies turned peachy, buildings - faded grey. I forced myself out of my room. I walked west

“Don’t ever leave your room!” - said Joseph Brodsky. He continued:

“Let nobody but the room
know what you look like. Incognito ergo sum,
as substance informed its form when it felt despair.
Don’t leave the room! You know, it’s not France out there”.

It’s Brooklyn, and I call it home. It’s been 4400 days since I’ve arrived. 12 years ago or so. Sunsets are nice. I like the pizza sign doubled-up and reflected in a parked car. What else?

Before moving here, I imagined myself owning a photo studio. Figuratively speaking, my initial dream of NYC started in an empty cyclorama space in my head. Now I’m traumatized by it. I start walking faster when I see photo equipment in street windows.

What attracts me the most is towers.

They seem so stable. Not bothered by anything. Strong.

I’d like to be strong one day.

Reconstructing my reality and personality with the help of Jungian analysis I realized that there’s so much darkness in my unconsciousness - apparently, it might be a karmic curse or generational trauma history. It comes in my dreams trying to teach me lessons and giving out weird hints. If only I could decode them quickly.

I’ve been drawing, but it gives no answers, really. All I know that there’s so much fear in me, wild, unexplained, raw and animalistic. It’s bad. Fear evokes anger and takes away power.

“You are just so, so angry, - he told me. - Relax”. This statement made me furious. My left arm was pulled in the air by some invisible force. My face crooked in a grin of hate. An almost uncontrollable part of myself was trying to reach the nasty MF’ neck. I woke up and remembered:

"Namah Saptanam Samyak Sambuddha Kotinam TADYATHA: Om! Cale Cule Cundi Svaha" - I sang.

Fairy Tales and Parasites

A human mind can be compared to a parasitic plant. It attaches itself to a tree of a certain reality and stays there stuck for life unless it discovers a possibility to move onto another host - a taller tree with a fuller crown, better access to the sun and well-nourished roots. But how can a vine with no eyes believe in the existence of other trees around? That’s where it gets ridiculous: you just have to have faith in fairy tales.

See your beautiful dream tree-reality clearly even as the blind ivy you are. Pin the target slide in your head and move your leaves, one by one, in the direction of the imaginary achievement. There will be many distractions on the way trying to get you confused. Rocks be falling and other plants trying to block you from further moves. There’s also your own shadow aka fear.

I came to the point of my life when my mind was feeding off its own sick and sad-looking stems with no flowers, running destructive thoughts in circles, drying out the tree’s roots and wanting to end its existence. Unfortunately, the mind is infinite and can’t die. It just finds itself attached to different trees-realities. It also obeys to multi-dimensional conservation laws known to humanity for a very long time. And so I ask AI… What are those laws? And NYC answers.

Frida Kahlo Couldn't Dream

My friend is an artist. She paints these large-scale acrylic abstractions. Four years ago I walked into her apartment in New York, laid down comfortably on a massage table she had placed next to one of her artworks and let her tattoo my face. The procedure took a couple of hours. Sharp needles tickled my forehead, injecting color in between of eyebrows hair. I loved the result: my silent films 1920s face has been transformed into a dark-framed 2020s feature.

Painting & permanent brows make-up by Anna Nareiko

In two years the paint has faded, and I had to go & tattoo my brows again. In a professional world of permanent make-up it’s called “touch-up”. This time it was in a SPA setting, my eyebrows masteritza was tired of New York and was getting ready to leave. If you told me back then that I will fly all the way to St Augustine, Florida in 2024 to tattoo my eyebrows, I would’ve probably laughed. I still am.

O, du lieber Augustin (oh, dear Augustine)
Augustin, Augustin,
Mädl ist weg, Mädl ist weg (Girl is Gone)

But my eyebrows are back in place! Oh, Augustine*. And what will you do for the beauty?

Her name is Anna Nareiko and her art is permanently on my face.

Thank you, Ms. Artist. Frida Kahlo couldn't even dream.

A Conflict Of Interests

As you might know, 🇷🇺 white-blue-red tricolor belongs to Russia. Thanks to a never ending “special operation” activity in Far Fur Lands of medved, samovar and vodka right now, we have a news machine disaster non-stop creating content for tripped out Pinky Putin & Vova Brain reality-show episodes. American citizens cover production costs, but reasonably raise many questions as they have no idea who is in charge of this weird project. Perhaps, AI.

As a result, my controlling and curious mind keeps introducing me to a wonderfully sabotaging idea of “going back to my country to check myself”.

Who knows, maybe they all just sit together with Xi Jinping in Kremlin and meditate without me?

“But you can’t go!” - annoyed and depressed Woody Allen’ character exclaims in my head. This гундосing-пиндосing inner voice is always right.

In my motherland, you see, I’ll be considered a “foreign agent”. That sounds like a lot of trouble I don’t need (but subconsciously really want to experience).

I notice little details around me obsessively and I force my sacred meanings onto them.

There was a white-blue-red appearance of a tiny candy wrapper flying in the air in front of my eyes in NYC park today. The weather turned windy earlier, and the fresh breeze from both rivers might’ve picked up this piece of trash tricolor. It looked alarming. The skies were bright white and cloudy, and the candy wrapper kept spinning in the air for a minute or two, shining. I thought of nukes.

Can they?


Marasmós - μᾰρασμό

From Proto-Indo-European *mer- (to die, disappear) and Ancient Greek -μός (-mós, action noun suffix) // Related to μᾰραίνω (maraínō, “to quench; to waste, wither”

Sweet Deal! 2.50 for a Black Hole experience.

Last week I went to a park with a Soviet Cheburashka toy in my “New York Keith Haring” canvas bag. This stuffed animal “unknown to science” became a visual symbol of my past. I put all my rebel-child upsetting experiences into that stupid looking male doll. Too long to explain, but I had to destroy Cheburashka by orders of my Gestalt therapist.

I wanted to burn him first, but that would be hard to carry out in the NYC Parks space. Burning ritual of that woolen creature made out of highly-flammable russian plastic materials might even cause Great Inwood Hill fires which will smoke up the entire Manhattan island. Too much of the risk. And so I decided that I want my trauma toy animal to be eaten by dogs.

The problem I faced once I brought Cheburashka to the park was ridiculous: dogs around here are way too friendly. They are not interested in tearing psychological ritual totems apart. I left it under a tree for 20 minutes, sat in the distance and watched retrievers, bulldogs, poodles, terriers and huskies passing by. I then got scared that my ugly cutie pie might attract creeps or drug addicts. I had to return under the tree and pick Cheburashka up. Across, there was the river.

"Cheba Pixel Blyat" photo video collage

He’s been thrown into the dark muddy waters returning back to the shore, to me, in the matter of minutes. I picked him back up with a stick, turned upside down (scratched round eyes facing the sky) and pushed far away. Fast river flow coming down from Hudson pushed the toy back to the rocky shore of Spuyten Duyvil Creek where I were standing. I had to leave him stuck in the mud. Next day, the waters will rise up, and he’ll be picked up and washed away. Poor, poor Cheburashka.

Selfie with a stranger

Today I went to check on him. Walking through NYC Park felt like some kind of an endless festival of Dominican Summer: Latina beats, baseball, folding chairs and grandmas with golden hoops earrings sitting next to speakers blasting music. I saw people chilling, having dates, kissing, picking strawberries at picnics, playing sports, taking pictures and dancing.  I’ve heard some tunes and couldn’t help it but started moving my hips a bit. Cheburashka was nowhere to be seen. A sharp emotion of weird sadness hit my solar plexus. It is what it is for now //

Doubled // Dimension

“Assimetry” - view of The Cloisters, June 13th 2024

What would you do finding yourselves in a forest inhabited by fairies who manipulate lost humans with the power of their minds? While you’re desperately trying to figure out what’s going on they are engaged in their own domestic intrigue and won’t rest your brain. You are just very confused and want to leave, but it seems impossible - it’s just this scary dream you were chosen to watch. But you are also curious AF (and easily manipulated by fairies). Would you run away? Take deep breaths?

“Beatrice, 26 foor” 2016 - Self-portrait

You see, in the Fairyland nightmare dimension everyone is just so terrible at playing their roles that you start to laugh hysterically as if it meant to be a comedy. But it is not. And so your new master friends don’t like it and get really mad.

“Zoom-in Error” - The Cloisters, 2024 / View from Beatrice Apartments, 2016

You can sense that there’s some danger in the air, but also doubting your own fear as you start to think it’s just a dream in an unfortunate afternoon nap.

It is June Thirteen 2024 in New York City, and it got really hot today. Siesta!