Two Poems by Ross Vassilev

a friend of the poor

Frankie Yale was
the biggest mobster
in New York in the 1920s
made a fortune from
Prohibition

he was old school:
bootlegging
protection
gambling, etc.

he wasn't no pimp
or drug pusher

he gave food
and money
to the poor when
they needed it

he wasn't like all those
bankers
businessmen
and patriots
who think the poor
are lazy and
stupid

you needed help--
he gave it

and when his old friend
Al Capone had him
gunned down
and the car crashed
some family's Bar Mitzvah

he got one of the biggest
funerals in New York's
history

all the poor came out
and there was a million
dollars worth of
flowery wreaths

they don't make 'em like that
anymore.



no shit

I have dreams like
being in Russia
amid all the poverty that
Gorby and Yeltsin and
the rest of the asshole
traitorous Right created
it's often so realistic
I wake up feeling sick

or I dream that I'm
wandering in some strange
place and there's other
people there but they
ignore me and I ignore
them (dreams imitating life)

or this town is a raging
inferno and the flames are
kissing the night sky
and when all the white trash
have been burned alive
and there's nothing left
of the this shitty little town
Satan puts out the flames
by pissing on them.

I guess I must be crazy.