Boost Lyenina

This is as far as I can remember the first proper poem I wrote.  I may have made some attempts in junior high for Mr. Killilea and Mrs. Crosby but that was a different endeavour.  If I recognize the type set correctly this was printed on our dot matrix printer off of our fairly primitive late 80's PC.  Its dated spring 91 which I suspect means April, my final month in high school.  I got the Bust of Lenin during our exchange trip to the Soviet Union the previous year.  The spelling of the title is of course the Russian pronunciation.

Boost Lyenina (Bust of Lenin)                                             Spring '91

On top of His bedraggled alarm clock
in His perch
the bald, bland eyes of Lenin
stare straight past me.

The same generic tie and suit,
immortalized in cheaply painted silver.
The same goatee,
protruding like a crazed intellectual.

And on His smooth, moon-like bald scalp
a trace of Russian chocolate and wax
melted on His birthday
in the town of His namesake.

His gaze is still past me as it was then
but it is not the same.
He has lost His edge.
He has become numbed,
      by staring at Woody Allen and Diane Keaton,
who fall in love on the wall across the room.