At Trotsky’s Deathplace
2022 - 2024
ONE
I pissed in Trotsky’s final home,
Few visitors,
Watchtower and guard house
tattered,
Didn’t do the job.
Small and dark rooms,
Little light.
As dark, perhaps,
As russian rooms known once.
History occupies the day.
Coyocoan in the end.
***
Busy wide roads outside,
just beyond.
lines outside and thruout casa azul,
Trotsky’s place mostly empty
thick cdmx smog and deep
sunset ribbon orange
tenochtitlan to mexico city with the spanish
rolling thunder fills the valley
everyday
the city is sinking
twenty inches a year
the great valley
the great past
the great smog
the great population
the great clouds
***
he was killed in this study
where i stand,
or the icepick went through the skull
by the stalinist pretender
who had planned it all along,
and he struck as leon read a passage to him
and leon fought back
and his bodyguards beat ramón
almost to death
and leon stopped them
said he could talk
then next day leon died
so the blow was in this study
where i stand
but not quite where i stand
the blow was in this study
beyond the railings
the railings in this empty museum
this place is a hidden crypt
half-forgotten,
escondido—
Trotsky lost again and again and again,
he is a hero,
he was a loser—
The house where he died is a mausoleum for the dream.
***
It’s the total ambivalence of deathtime and the irreducible world
To human yearning and our mortal attempt.
Being in the presence of death is like looking down and seeing a dog pissing on your leg and it looks up at you and you both hold eye contact and the dog doesn’t stop pissing until he’s done, and then he walks on and you just watch him go.
Maybe when death comes at last we will know.
TWO
It was the same feeling in Trotsky’s study as in the crypt of sachsenhausen,
and the same smell—
chemical, like chlorine, burns the back of the throat, like cocaine drip,
is that just what death brings?
the smell I think of ghosts
and of other worlds foreclosed
the reek of dreams foreclosed
by violent hands
by thoughtless voidful minds
The same feeling too as on the east side of Uvalde
by the fenced off school still being deconstructed room by room
the school where young children had been shot
and in the ruined streets around the school
houses so fallendown you’d think they were abandoned
until i see the young children rush out to play
a few feet from their peers’ killing floor
and of course it happened
of course it did
walk the streets around that school
of course it happened
some people can let this world
subsume them in its womb of apathy and exploitation
others must find an ending,
grant themselves a narrative,
the privilege of that,
and in that ruined east side of Uvalde
I found no endings available,
even fewer narratives,
so of course the kid killed the kids,
the ruin of that place
the scream of the abandonment of that place
by a society more like a great dynamo of dollarblood
than a society of lives and souls,
such places challenge those born there
not to match the violence of the world which so
brutalizes and condemns them
with their own.
I had set out that morning
for no reason
except inquiry
and fear of my mind alone in my empty room
in a new city in which i new noone
and I ended up driving from Austin to the border
I crossed down through great canyons and dry dead land
I turned from Del Rio east
I passed through Quemado
packs of stray dogs ran down the roadsides
each a different breed and a different age
and a kind of glee in their kinship and their freedom
beside more ruined homes
and just beyond
the wire fence
beyond which trucks crawled and kicked up dust
the border patrol searching for people whose dreams
violate their edicts, their mandates, their laws
and I noticed down there
suddenly after hours of no phone service
by the border the connection is stronger than ever
and then I noticed all the new sleek black towers
dotting the roads which trace the border
and there where there is nothing
nothing but the edge of America
they have put their finest technologies
you could stream in perfect resolution
events the world over
because they need that service down there
they need it to catch those whose dreams violate their order
or at least force them into the driest spots
where they will get lost and die of thirst,
better that than face their souls,
their faces, their inquiries, their longings,
their similarities to you,
although yes they lack the badge,
and the uniform, too.
And on the way up from there,
after my car was searched by border patrol outposts
an hour or so out from the border
on every road which could have brought you there or back
as I passed vast vast ranches and wild military enclosures
which looked more like nature reserves
I saw the route would take me through Uvalde
and I wondered if it was the same Uvalde
the one we all know
from its moment in the sun
from its day of death
and I thought well I am a morbid sort
if it is that same Uvalde
I must try to see the school
and I did
and it was silent
and there was nobody around
and the road is wide
which passes through Uvalde
and it is a place which you pass through
and it is a place which you forget
if even you notice it
like all these haunted places
where death settles its chemical smell
and its endless cold
which seems to find you first in the center of your bones
and work its way throughout you from the centers of you
those haunted places
where foreclosed dreams reside
Trotsky, Uvalde, Sachsenhausen,
the nursing home room I saw my grandmother in
for the last time
and where
at my first glimpse
there from the doorway
in the very first instant
the very first sight of her
I knew I would not see her again
and I could not speak for the first 20 minutes or so
because I knew I would crumble into tears
and I just pressed my fingernails into my fingertips
just as my mother had told me
when as a child I was crying at the school gate in the morning
and she said
do what the royals do,
when they think they might cry in public,
press your fingernails into your fingertips,
it will stop you from crying,
and I did,
and it worked,
and my grandmother died two weeks later,
and you can see it in our eyes,
or in the darkness just below,
when the time is near,
and the eyes no longer quite see the world
but see the space between,
and are halfway out the door already,
and I saw it in hers, in that first instant, and I knew,
and we had almost not gone
not gone to see her
because we were tired
but we figured well we should
perhaps we might regret it
if we did not go
if we did not
and what wonders pass us by
what dreams and joys and futures
pass us by
when we say
not today, but soon,
I promise,
I do care,
I have a lot on my plate at the moment,
but soon,
I promise I do care,
just not today,
what wonders pass us by
when we blink—
THREE
At the grave with the red flag blowing and brushing my hair,
I finally feel what the pilgrim feels at the shroud.
There are such things as real things.
This is what I think at the grave, and I am briefly hopeful.
Soon after when time and the city move in again,
I forget about hope and stop believing anymore that things are real.
The dream is dead, the bad guys won.
I don’t know what is alive and what is dead,
I don’t know if anything is lost,
or anything won.
I don’t know what’s next,
I don’t know what is to come,
I know nothing of tomorrow.
I won’t fight for anyone, anyone but myself,
and one or two others,
but even for them I’d hesitate.
I’d let them rush in first.
Or maybe I still care.
Maybe I do still drown in unmet relentless love
And my soul is wide open
And it lets the day rush in
Like great waters over the sinners’ world.
***
Trotsky is dead,
the dream is real,
the dream is lost,
the world is dead,
the world is alive,
I live in death
I am haunted by life
Because I am a great fool,
And stubborn,
And naive,
Because I never learn,
And I wonder if we can do that,
I wonder if we can.
***
And maybe,
in the end,
I will give it all up for you.