The Life Review of Robin Ludd
By © Anton
Vendamencsh, 2017
4 The Story of Father
Father’s brother
(Who outpaced him
By eight years)
Uncle Karl
Born 1884
Died 1910
At the age of
Twenty-six
(According to
rumor
Of syphillis
contracted
As a student
In St. Peterburg)
Was the one who
Brought his father
From St Peterburg
(A relay junction
At the time
Of ideas
From America)
News
That a newspaper
May be published
For pennies
If advertisements pay
For the rest.
Grandfather
Having failed
As a playwright
(He was too much
Of a moralizer
To write other than
A ‘How to’ script
Of how work
Work and more work
Is the tool
That brings wealth)
Took the idea
And shared it
With his paramour
Who (it so happened)
Was soliciting adds
For German newspapers
In Riga.
Mein liebes Schatz
(My dear treasure)
Said grandfather
(Who spoke German well)
Let us start
A newspaper
Of our own
You pimp us ads
I will persuade
The public
That we are
On the up and up
(No alcohol
Or any of that)
I will choose
What we print
And who
Gets paid what.
My prohibitionist play
”In Fog With Alcohol”
Is evidence
Of my forthrightness
And vision
We will become rich
As trains carry
Our newspaper
Of news
And the story
Of Tarzan
To Luddies
expelled
From the wood
To slave as
peasants
For the barons
And church.
Milia saw
Her opportunity
And answered:
I will do it,
dear
If you but let me be
The publisher
Since you
Cannot be such
Until you make
Enough money
To pay off
Your creditors.
So offered
My Godmother-to-be
Her word of
honor
To her lover
Ensnared by debt
By virtue of
His ambition
To be reborn
As a City-zen
Of consequence.
Once the headmaster
Of the best
Countryside school
Anywheres near about
Grandfather desperate
To join the eruption
Of Tsargrad Riga
Into a City
Believed to have
Megalo-politic
Potential
Took the hussy
up
On what he
believed
Was a pulp
fiction dream
Beyond her
reach.
The rest is
history
He and his
Got tripped
Royally
By diligently
Faked loyalty.
After returning
From the Ukraine (1920)
(where he had learned
Managerial skills
As an officer
Managing a coalmine
A railroad station
And had advised
And had advised
The would be tsar
General Denikin
On the railway network
In Ukraine)
Father began working
At The Latest News
And continued
the newspaper’s mission—
To bind
A million Latvijan Ludds
Emerging
Out of the woods
Into City-zens*
*a mental condition
Of ambition.
Whatever his hopes
Father
A man of pretention
And station
Was let down
By his addiction
To intimacies
Irresponsible
Demanding
Temperemental
Immature
And painful
To all witnesses
Who had to pretend
Indiference
As if such was
God’s ‘normal’.
In the end
Milia became
His Harpie
By circumstance
In the seventh ring of hell
On Earth
Where trees are replaced
By skyrises of concrete
Rising into fogs
Of money.
Even his mother-in-law
My other grandmother
Could not shut up
About it
And cawed
(in a letter to mother
Years later)
Inuendoes
that tried to cover up
The sale
by her husband
The ambassador
Of their spoiled daughter
To grandfather
Who to cover
His son’s peccadillos
(I have two
half-sisters
That I know of)
And his own
Embarrassement
Presented mother
To father
And ordered marriage.
He did not cut
Father’s salary
Which maybe why
His conduct
Remained as
before.
Cawed the mother
Of my mother:
How I prayed
For you, my dear
When you married
John.
Mother
In need of a vindication
For her own role
In letting children
Be fucked up on her
Did not protest
And let nannies
Raise her children
As if motherless.
Only my younger brother
(Born in the year
Before the world collapsed
And all nannies
Ran away)
Ever lived with mother
Who never mentioned
Father to him.
Which is why
For naked
advantage
He slipped his
foot
Under my heel.
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