poetryrepairshop 04.03:020 Contemporary International Poetry online since 1997 Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, and eBookWeb , a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101. Until recently, he served as the economic advisor to the government of Macedonia. Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com poetryrepairshop 04.03:020 Prague at Dusk c2004 SAM VAKNIN
	SAM VAKNIN Prague at Dusk Prague lays over its inhabitants in shades of grey. Oppressively close to the surface, some of us duck, others simply walk carefully, our shoulders stooped, trying to avoid the monochrome rainbow at the end of the hesitant rain. Prague rains itself on us, impaled on one hundreds towers, on a thousand immolated golden domes. We pretend not to see it bleeding to the river. We just cross each other in ornate street corners, from behind exquisite palaces. We don't shake heads politely anymore. We are not sure whether they will stay connected if we do. It is in such times that I remember an especially sad song, Arabic sounds interlaced with Jewish wailing. Wall after wall, turret after turret, I re-visit my homeland. It is there, in that city, which is not Arab, nor Jewish, not entirely modern, nor decidedly antique that I met her. And the pain was strong.		Thylazine	04.03 001 014 015 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 011 012

poetryrepairshop 04.02:020 Contemporary International Poetry online since 1997 Getting Old c2004 SAM VAKNIN

SAM VAKNIN Getting Old The sageing flesh, a wrinkled vicedom. The veined reverberation of a life consumed. On corneas imprinted with a thousand dreams, now stage penumbral plays directed by a sight receding and a brain enraged. To fall, as curtains call, to bow the last, rendered a sepia image in a camera obscured, a line of credits, fully exhausted, fully endured.

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