The human obsession with purpose is merely
A distraction from the absurdity of existence—Gogol
Dear Nikolai, you inspire me.
I love the way you write,
but I can’t figure you out.
How can one so weird become
so great, show keen insight,
make us laugh through “The Nose”
and weep wrapped in Akaky’s “The Overcoat?”
What a storied life, odd from childhood.
Absconded with your mother’s mortgage,
failed as a poet, in government,
conjured stories of devils and witches,
flopped as a Medieval professor,
faked toothaches, often absent
to hide your ignorance of that Age.
Wrote the “Inspector General,”
but left for Germany because
your critics hated or loved it
for all the wrong reasons.
Wrote famous”Dead Souls,”
to lead Russia back to God.
But religion choked your soul.
Father K. intoned: “Sinful author.”
You burned a second version of “Dead Souls.”
Punished yourself. Starved yourself to death.
Exhumed–face down in your casket.
Others—cut off an ear, knelt for hours in the snow,
fatally shot in a tavern, found dead in a gutter,
forced pills down their gullet,
a dress loaded with rocks to drown,
another chose not to drown at the last minute,
spouted Fascism until thrown into an asylum,
a head thrust in an oven, a gun blasted a face.
Constant turmoil, banned, exiled too.
What price genius?
Originally published in Cajun Mutt Press