Saturday, June 16, 2018



The Life Review of Robin Ludd
By © Anton Vendamencsh, 2017

3 The Story of Grandfather

After the Vikings
called Sveriges*
*Sverige, aka Swedes
a name which
 in Latvijan means
 ‘important’, re: svarīgie
Failed to defeat
The Ludds
Of either
The Balts or Rus
Those who survived
Their carnage
Would not come
Out of the woods
They had gone
To save
But which saved them.

Who remembers
How the Sveriges
Cut down the Ludds
As well as
The secret
holy grove
Atop the Blue Mountain
To build their fort?

Governments
Of course
Have come to
Replace God.
Have they not?
And enslave the Ludds
By denying them
Memory
Is it not so?

The whore of Wolmar
Magdalena von Halert
A local girl
Elevated by events of war
To the post
Of Generalin
By her sister in fate
Tsarina Katerina I

(Even Voltaire
Did not dare
To reveal
Her true story
In all its glory.)

    Then summoned
    The survivors
    Of martyred
    Yan Huss
    (A spiritual heir
    Of the chair makers
Or Cathars of Bosnia
As well as Occitania)
    To herald with trumpets
Of rhubarb stems
The survivors
Of a Jerusalem
Long forgotten
In forgotten Livonia.

Grandfather’s forebears
Were among
The Moravian Luuds
Who

(men and women
Of commitment
Having earned
Their reputation
By resolving
Not to fear death
And deny
Themselves rank)

    Not yet committed
    To the City
    And its illnesses
Substituting
For Nature

Came with song
And trumpets
Of rhubarb
(Doodah, doodah)
To share in the labors
Of the Latvijan Ludds.

Thus,
A nation of Ludds
(Populists
By the mercy
Of self-sustaining
Homesteads
In the wood)
Was teased
To come
Into the open.

    A long lost theology
    Was reborn therewith
And passions
Violently repressed
Were with great passion
Reborn
Repressed
And reborn again
To the trumpets
Of Armageddon
And Civil War
Throughout
Eastern Europe.

The utility
Of suffering and death
Was rediscovered
And God was denied
By His true believers
With great fury.

Godless men
And women resolved
To deny
(If love was lost
As in ages past)
Earthly resurrection.

    Life on Earth was
    But a testing ground
    For life elsewhere
--So they claimed
(Feathers of angels
Still sticking
To their arms
Holding a pistol
In hand).

    A war of religions
Began (1743)
    Between the Ludds
    And the Lutherans
    The last who
    had been added
to the Romanov throne
By tsar Peter and
And by the tax collectors
In Riga and St. Petersburg
On behalf of
The fortune seekers
The lords of Waloon
Who (like Bismarck
And Ludendorff
Did it to the Prussians)
Tried to assimilate
The Latvijan Luuds
Of Wolmar
To their cause.

Great-grandfather’s inn
Was put to fire
And grandfather
Born [(1860)
(Just five months before)]
And his teeth rattling(?)
Watched the blaze
From a craddle
Left in a pile of snow
Just across the road
As his mother Anna
Scrambled to extract
From the flames
Her loom
And a few blankets.

    Great-grandfather, John,
    Who best knew
    Where the barawika
Mushrooms grew
Ceased to be a believer
    And died soon after.

    The widowed Anna
    Made a living
Blessing
    The future harvests
    Of the Walons
    Renamed ‘barons’
    With cow manure
    At the end of
a pitchfork
and wove and darned
grandfather his pants
So he would not go
Bareass
And attend school.

The story goes
That grandfather told
His drinking buddies
At a pub
(though he had sworn
Off alcohol):
”Someday
I will become
A millionaire.”

    And save the world?

What wit
Stuck him
Into the pub?
Was it Milia
Who commissioned
His biography?

    Or was it
The two other?

The first of which
Was of a tradition
By herders
(Also known as pagans
From pa-Yans = peons; gans = john = herder)
Who went
After the sermon
(usually given
By a cabal
Of skinners of the spirit
Called ‘germans’)
To a pub
To clear from memory
The lies
They had been forced
To listen to.

The second wit
Was of wrongs
And things
Jan Huss had not
Allowed himself
To think of.

Is life perhaps
God’s fantasy?
Is God a relativist
Who obeys no rules
Whatever?

If so
Does God fantasize
In the real
And does not forgive
Free will?

This may be

    Why cats
    Purring contentedly
    In my lap
    Fear death
    By starvation
    And catch starlings
    Gathering worms
    For their nestlings.

    It maybe why humans
    Wish to become
Millionaires
    And fear death
For themselves
But not for
Their grandchildren
Who are left
To be drowned
By the heirs of
A second wife
Or the lottery
To play.

This maybe why
Grandfather become
(In his own mind
In spite of his religion)
A fantast and
A millionaire Bolshevik
Of sorts

Left it to
His former wife
and children
To worry about
The future

    For which worry
    Grandmother
Was murdered
And grandchildren
empoverished
    By an aging whore
    Planning to marry
A Latvijan
Ex-president
And go
Lovey dovey
Live in Switzerland.

Grandfather,
Not having sought
Advice from the gypsies
Of Khazaria
Of how to sell
Needles and yarns
On the way
To save humankind
From itself

Successfully
Went bankrupt
On his first try
At a career change.

Be that as it may
He could not repay
His creditors.

Which is why
He went to Riga
And made
Liaison with
An ambitious whore
married to an actor
To make better use
Of her skills.

    Grandfather became
    Milia’s ‘Bingo!’
    She spun
God’s roulette wheel
    And tickled
Grandather’s roulettes
    Until he
    (having learned
    From his past failures
    The art
    Of how to shortchange)
    Became fat
    On the backs of
    Shortchanged writers,
    Who flattered and
Convinced him
    That he truly was
    A millionaire.

For seven years

After taking to
The greener pastures
Of a wealthy man
In retirement

Grandfather
Raised studs
And held to the
Illusion.

The Latvijan government
Bought an escadrille
Of six biplanes
(I saw them fly)

In his name
Though Milia
(Clever as ever
Now rouletting
The balls of
The last President
Of Latvija
And, thusly, becoming
The First Lady of Latvija)
Approved
And paid for them.

In 1939
Blood clogged
Grandfather’s legs
And gangrene set in.

Alas! Penicillin
Just on the market
For which
(For show’s sake)
Milia sent
To Helsinki an airplane

Is not an anti-coagulant.

And so
The millionaire
Once a debt slave
Died as if
A natural death
    Leaving his heirs
    Holding
An almost
    Empty bag*.

*When after 25 years
The Court recognized
The claims of his heirs
They (including those
Of the 1st
Latvijan president
--His son my Godfather)
Were too needy
To continue pursuit
Of the guttering
The Austrian wasp
And collect
The stolen interest
Of 20 plus years.
 

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