[Michael Cantor]

From Russia With Love

I think today I'll write about
Potemkin Villages
while sipping my tea -
hell, I'm Russian,
or at least my father was born there,
and I even wear a big gold ring,
a double eagle coin
with the Tsar of All the Russias
trapped face down
kissing my finger,
so the description of these villages -
facades
propped up house-fronts
nothing behind them
erected quickly
fits right in -
and I can even use it
to write my daily
Potemkin Poem
because it gives me something,
to talk about
some starting point
and piece of reality -
good images,
the ring,
all those Potemkin housefronts,
maybe sheathed in ice
in a hard Russian winter,
while I scribble
scrabble dribble
drabble
words and pictures down a page
as quickly as I can type
and make sure to
provide
many
line breaks
so it looks like a poem
and it's amazing
how many people
regard it as a poem,
even me,
even though all I did was
quickly write
whatever came into my head
scrible scrabble, dribble, drabble,
for fifteen minutes,
and here's my latest
Potemkin Poem.


Confession: I did write this in about fifteen minutes to mock something or other - maybe Zapruder (who remembers?) - but it was many years ago. I added the tea line (I assume that's a suitable substitute for coffee) just now.