Two Poems by Jenya Doudareva

Music And Lyrics By

I was there I was there I was
There I was there I was there when

The clouds were melting icebergs
Leaking into the sky, gazed at
By a young boy born the same day
As I, who knew he was going to die. So he

Tentatively strummed that song where
Both music and lyrics were by
That traveller just passing by
Who correctly identified

That we were ever the dreamers,
Hoping to be remembered fresh,
Hoping to have the papers say:
Oh what a loss – so young, so dead!

We were ever the visionaries,
Anticipating what it’s like
To be right in the middle of
Mathematical infinity,

Anticipating that nowhere
Isn’t such a bad place after all,
That the swift rock-n-roll-like end
Of the known universe is fine

As long as we get to stay in
A cozy burnt-orange chair and
Fuzzy slippers, reminiscing…

I was there
Those were the days
All my lovers are gone now
But they weren’t my type anyway

---

The conclusion had a specific wavelength

Red
captures eyes; they always wear
all-black everything. Words
that make your chest go ow
are still coming out of nowhere.

It was hard enough to change while
constantly
remaining exactly the same. Now
this.

The dust settled at dawn. Then came the flies. Their
unremarkable wings matched our eyes –
veiny, translucent, fidgety. Such was the style,
just ask the tv.

We never thought there was a problem
especially when some nerd with a wrong colour palette
Insisted there was. Who could blame us?
And yet there it was – red – smelling like iron,
irresistible to insects.

---

 

about the author:

Jenya Doudareva loves precision. That fact has moulded her into an engineer and a poet. This is her second Vending Machine Press appearance. Her poems have also been featured in Clementine Poetry Journal, and her paper on algorithms for safe irradiation of brain tumours is available in an operations research journal somewhere. Jenya works in healthcare and is an editor for Weird Canada, a blog that celebrates DIY and grassroots Canadian art. She welcomes the robot apocalypse.

You can buy her poetry here.