(parts III and IV of IV)
Complainers more than agents of change.
Russians love their vodka and cigarettes.
They love, they need, this, that, who cares?
Remember this. In their blood, Russians
like good poetry and honor their poets.
This poem "NO LIFE" is endless, bottomless.
A bowl of watery gruel and humiliations.
But in dreams above the menacing clouds,
there is another bowl with matching ladle
of smooth, lustrous pewter. Our poet is eager
to fill it with another poem: "LIFE WITH LOVE".
Life as an endless, bottomless love poem.
Sound too good to be true? Yes? Maybe?
IV Look. Some bars of soap sink. Some bars
of soap float. And some love poems elevate.
Love, an enigma we wish to recognize fully.
But then, where would poets of love be?
Some images we see clearly, others not.
Some of the lines we understand, others not.
Some words we know, others not. Let us
write, say, hear and touch the words as well.
Some rhymes we feel to the bone, while
other rhymes seem to elude our grasp.
Each of us reads from beginning to end.
And every time we read something new.
Readers: we are all mortal, all too mortal.
All except poems, if, they are good poems.