Poetry: Louis Kasatkin

By Louis Kasatkin

Louis is editorial administrator at www.DestinyPoets.co.uk and founder of Destiny Poets and in his spare time is a civic, community, political activist, blogger and general nuisance to the status quo!

Louis Kasatkin

Passing Thoughts

Passing thoughts,
Passing us by into
the nothingness of nothing,
the nothing of nothingness;
the wherefore of whys,
the whys of wherefore;
the noise of silence,
the silence of noise;
the emptiness of empty,
the empty of emptiness;
the traveller knocking at the door,
waiting,
waiting,
waiting
***

The Death of Stalin

Sergei Ivanovich was once “tovarich”
and hummed along to the “Internationale”,
he once was nearly bloodied at
at the barricades,mentioned in official
despatches he became a Party “hero”;
Sergei Ivanovich grew accustomed
to snap-heeled salutes in the
Kolyma Peninsula,1936 or thereabouts,
supervising prisoners’slashed-vein evenings
and their bowls of tepid soup
and the twenty kilo boulders being
passed along hand to hand:
and then,
They came for him;
the official ZIL saloon arrived
bringing with it The Silver Braid,
who lit their cigarettes tracing
scarlet arabesques in the gloomy dusk,
Sergei Ivanovich didn’t keep them waiting,
bowl-spasmed funk robbed him of
his steadfast demeanour as he opened
the door and the ZIL saloon
with its incense of iodine and
brown leather slinked back to
the wolverine forest where in
the night memories lose themselves,
and in the morning are found,
covered in quicklime..

Setu, December 2019