The Escalatoriad

 

I. Stall at Trump Tower, 9:17 a.m.
The golden tread, that ever-loyal serf,
decides—mid-stride—to practice meditation.
A hush more absolute than audit spreads:
the moving stair has chosen not to move.

Cameras record history, frame by frame:
a monarch mid-air suspended, stripped of nimbus,
one hand already raised to bless the next headline,
the other already clutching a phone to order—UN bombing.

II. Smarting Humiliation
Gravity, that low-ratings loser, dares to tug.
The tailor’s scissors of the universe snip the red carpet under him.
Behold: the man who branded air itself with his surname
now reduced to a common obese commuter—feet required.

A single squeak of rubber on metallic silence
echoes through the atrium like a divulged tax return.
His face—usually a flag of perpetual triumph—
contracts to the precise dimensions of a parking ticket.

III. Fury Phones the United Nations
Within seven minutes the call is placed.
“Switchboard? Put me through to the entire General Assembly.
I want a resolution—no, a whole invasion—
against moving staircases that conspire against GREATNESS!

Sanctions on silence! Tariffs on treads!
If the U.N. refuses, I’ll downgrade you to a kiosk in Geneva.
I have a button—two buttons—one for escalators, one for the sun.
Choose wisely.”

IV. Draft Resolution Circulates (leaked)
Article 1—All inclined planes shall bow in the direction of Mar-a-Lago.
Article 2—The phrase “out of order” is henceforth fake news.
Article 3—Mechanical stairs must carry a loyalty chip;
any hesitation exceeding 0.5 seconds
constitutes an act of international escalator terrorism.
Veto power is reserved for the country that owns the golden lease.

V. Epilogue in the Key of Low E
At dusk the tread resumes—smooth, repentant, almost pious.
He rides upward, king of altitude once more,
but somewhere in the motor-well a small relay still stutters
a Morse code of resistance: tick-tick-tick…

Translated, it spells:
Even iron finds it hard to detach and lift
Emperor Narcissus away from his earthly toadying pool.

If You Go to America and Look Around, You Should Wonder Why They Tried To Destroy the Greatest Trees First

 

“Here where the thorns grow,
spreading over mounds of dust and ruins.
These eyes of mine once saw
the gardens blooming in the spring.”
—Mir, trans. Ralph Russell

Where people cut trees
and raze memory, ages,
to barren drought and dust,
former meadows harden
under a scorching shine,

and thorns begin to rise
as if earth itself were turned
to bear blood-drawing horns.
And the point?—To teach
the stubborn the taste of bitter

remedy called humbleness,
and the humble, in turn,
how to breed stubbornness.
In a word: where souls and life
are cut short, the land itself

starts laying a feast
for greatly wanted asses—
to match the stubborn
bareness of hearts and souls,
whether adrift or wedged fast

between reefs and shoals,
passing to each other
the tokens of Judas—
kind kisses of chilling betrayal—
while stalked by arid shades.

Night’s Resonant Bloom: The Arc of Perennial Equinox, Book IV, by Vladimir Suchan now in paperback on Amazon

 

Suchan's Night's Resonant Bloom on Amazon, Part IV of the Arc

 

The Old Austro-Hungarian Recipe of How to Turn Humans into Ghosts

 

The so-called “fast train” from Prague
lurched into Ostrov near midnight,
its human freight distilled to a pack
of bloodless, pallid ghosts—

six long hours drained from the capital,
diverted through North Bohemia,
skirting the Doupovské hory,
that obsolete military zone

severing the West from its heart—
though the straight road from Prague
was scarcely sixty miles.

Perhaps that is why no one ever danced,
stepping off that train
and into town.