Laika Floats In Outer Space
© Surazeus
2025 11 23

I doubt Laika flew far enough away
from Earth to see it as small ball for play,
nor did she live just long enough to see
beautiful vastness of our azure sea,
for she died when the capsule glowed too hot,
so she cannot run in Heaven with God.

Ivan stares out cracked window at the place
where Laika used to show her cheerful face,
then peers at silver mirror of the sky
to calculate where Sputnik may soon fly,
but all he sees are twinkling stars of ice
that prove there is no perfect paradise.

While typing short poems in Acmeist style,
that depict man of nature without guile
because he plows black Earth for noble cause
in harmony with universal laws,
Ivan sees black car brake outside his door
so he huddles terrified on the floor.

Trembling in fear as the secret police
arrest his neighbor who had called for peace,
Ivan hides small in shadow of despair
while they drag someone thumping down the stair,
then breathes again when tires squeal in the night
so he drinks cold vodka by candlelight.

Vowing to escape prison of the state,
Ivan leaves beef bone on cracked dinner plate,
then flees in snow-trapped woods of faceless ghouls
past abandoned churches and shuttered schools
with frantic intensity of the deer
that scampers from the hunter in blind fear.

Slipping through thick tangled bushes of hope
on freezing Christmas night down rugged slope,
Ivan wriggles under tall barbed-wire fence
to escape Heaven without penitence,
then races toward lush land of liberty
to live with free will in dire poverty.

Just as he nears locked gate of paradise
and leaps to soar on wings of joyful vice,
Ivan feels bullet of authority
strike his spine with jolt of absurdity,
so he falls tangled on barbed-wire of death
where he dangles high as he gasps for breath.

Hanging upside down on tangled barbed-wire,
Ivan listens to the heavenly choir
sing grandiose Ode to Joy Beethoven wrote,
then sees with surprise where angels may float
Sputnik blinking among stars of his dream,
so he and Laika stroll by sparkling stream.

surazeus.blogspot.com/2025/11/…

Orpheus strums lyre of Mercury while Laika and Ivan follow him from the Underworld so they may play ball with Earth in Elysian Fields.

#Poetry #Poem #Pastoral #Necropastoral #MetaModernism #Transrealism #NewSublimity #NewRomanticism #AmericanDream #Cinemism #Existentialism #Surrealism #NegativeCapability #NewGnosticism #MetaRealism #NewTranscendentalism #Astarism