"I Died in Berlin: The Acid Poems" - Complete poetry chapbook.

To-Fifths

neon signs-is
not their night
not so much
eternal cafes-not
at all
blaze hot light
cheap women-not
easy to
find
if you don't know
the exact
address
of fury
from vending machines
cigarettes glassy
emerges, a slimy
palm, claw actually
& a pack of Marlboro
people-smoke to
think monsters-all
we buried her
to-fifths

Lunch God

portrait, in twenty-one variations
doggerel image
saved-the same words
limited vocabulary
too little energy to pick out
fish, too little inspiration to create

the metaphor, there are too many reasoned
ready, not validating, open the
dictionaries
& wade in what's vulgar
learning that simple language
ridiculous!
subliminal fishermen
still get the same bones
in the meantime, kefir time + scavengers in leaded petrol
lunched with the body
of God

September 2008

me at fifteen
me at hundred again
heaps of has
did
gone mad, steady
city voice wiped free

new flat
new car
television face
her holy
initials
bagful of no
words
non-feathered cowards
left out
both persons mistaken
for drifting

me at birth
me at death
just words
breathing fleshless
feet up
coating years
in difference rippled
between

I died in Berlin
September 2008

Good Luck

uncomfortable questions
heard three streets away/or on the phone
inspire me to eat
at a small, cozy
Italian pizzeria, where immediately
I was offered a job -
wiping tables, serving pizza
with millions of unfinished
songs above my head, with the prospect of work
for vain brand for many long
years, but I always liked Italians, so
I accepted the deal

turned out the joint was guise
for local Mafia
I've always had good luck
Modern Trains

steel blood poured on the platform
elegant girl bounces
terrified-crowd coughs w/ laughter
it's just a "Yester" train , I whisper
taking away the ghosts from the deck
I also laugh, but w/ a drool of
mechanical croaking frogs

oh, it is not known
in the country from which I come
to our blood poured earlier
it's no shock
just
modern trains

Caterpillar Mountains

I should write about mountains
challenges, expeditions
not about loneliness of antennas in spike
chrome dusk, however, am disputing
w/ them often, and it obliges a...

cut open
scene
filth

...not easy to change your profession
storm CAT
caps & feel repulsion
in the night-abyss cinema
death draws more than
the sky
in the morning such as the...
wait!
I do not even want to be *dreaming* about
mountains
careful,
being mindful
not to write

Pulse Berlin

pulse
Berlin
curse
or swim
song or storm
or lady

must listen to
Lakomy
bury me later

Slave Shore Blues

a slave site, don't despair-done
your skull, kick start the last candle
today, the first night of the lone vigils
we set up the African guards
reels under your window
& tales of Satan in the basement
go graciously after bike
drive off in Kreuzberg torch
Chuck Berry kneeling
at the top of an empty church
we listened to him often this winter
snow fell when sirens sounded sirens
then it was too late to
form
reflections from the shore

Cloud Dictatorship

before someone puts out
another
monument
let us remember,
it's just newspaper
clippings

milk horses
pushing carriages &
late light bulbs
reach in the end for the purpose of
Marxist monks
intently watching
gas murder

that's setting their robes
on water
is that worth all this
chaos worth all
that peace, swim
in, be in?

keep in mind, is it not better
to honor the cloud?
today's monument
tomorrow's insult
today's freedom
tomorrow's dictatorship

Limit Is Now

I'm so burnt out, said the young man
arched in pancake keyholes
of onpouring orgasm
oh brave yesteryear's cricket!

notebooks w/out explanations
coffins w/out
burial
market me now
P.R. Me
mail me
Waldo – limit is
NOW

People Of The East

U-bahn
S-bahn
tram
linear meeting
empty seats
clerical tonnes
loose
semantically
discussion
the roots of rock'n ' roll
anonymous Black man "you
want to twist?"
syncopated keys birds
Swans frosted
dark heavy beer
light heart donors
houses without flaws, these open forever, smeared
w/ camels' blood, narcotic visions
of the people
of the East

River Flare Receiver

My coat (a)musing-what remains
in this body, which
wrote off the pen
what hasn't been discovered
in the after math
shambles of the century
who climbed to the top of the smartest
threw angel
danger muddle
gutter
idolized ghosts
Berlin's shortcomings, thought politicians
took pride in the winding-
up of the flea
Communist construction
and in the Palace - still - blaring music, crumb power
throws a flare on the river
si,
tar

Mime Mime

MIMe launches performance
& the onstilts dancers
rave
on the other side-someone puts
sculpture, another visionary
deconstructs the wasteland
what a threadbare slogan-in
nothing is empty, everything's back to the form
obey her tramps explored step
by step & bards
I make songs in humble
quadruplets, classic European
rhythms, rhymes greedimperious
few years earlier, roll virus isolation
by understreet secret rooms
contagious answering machines
& eternal rush of feathers of all
I scored
until the death of his death
amen

Thank You, Sexy

a couple of lives / 1 day ago
she said
"your poems are nothing"
& what should they be?
what's happening now,
what's special?
are kings and heroes born?
what topic does not go
well
with faint/fastest screens
news
papers?
so if yours "are nothing"
already means "pulse of existence"
then thank you for the
compliment,
sexy

No Sonnets, Thank You

cloud, o cloud - where today will
you
carry
my body? yesterday
I was with your
drift womb
it could accept an
apology

I stayed for a week
not finished the promised
line, anyway
I never wrote sonnets
a sleazy excuse
I know
the roof, the roof is where
today I'll dive in bio-
dump & who would lend a warm
jacket, I could get drunk
in Berlin
Görlitzer Park
too much, I want to say it in one
row

the Moon, the Moon, take
my shadow
home
and make it
good tea

We Like It

as if I didn't know who
angered his
hair, the
surer I am who rode the u-bahn
I, what I, in the opposite direction
asking uncomfortable questions
to assigned conductors
I am yesterday's-gazingly, groan in the blank
eyes of a woman in designer suit
listening to Gypsy
musicians -

- in Irish repertoire
& my time was up
I feel sorry for the young man
whose time has not yet started
cut shaving & trickles of blood
still hang on the chin

Sofa Hippie

you used all the bodies, love
walked
all bridges
scratched all stars
& what's down there in your hand? could it be the
continents
changed course? god bless the world
squandered
love? why else would you stand
buy irons
work shops

flee from eyes
seeking the place
of next conquest?
if I -had it- I would want this tasty morsel
you squandered
& would have to fall dead

what kind of monster would like to still-energy
power, possession
& yet his name was Hippie
so naked & innocent/48v in motorbike rim -
a sofa.

Paid Crap

When only routine knocks
to the licorice door, & threadbare
idiom mills eyes yesterday's
cigarette, it is time to
retire

maybe for a couple
years, forget about existence
of & "being
yourself" - a horrendously amateur
job, so that filling it
digests phlegm dawn

to yesterday's womb
Today - just pavement were a homeless bum
becomes a bassist & fires
flame funk machines

from that moment on
I count on anything - I'll give him
your business card – I hope
he drops by to the
studio

News from the City

irrelevant bord
ers industrial walls
eaux
ankle square cubics woodcut
ters, steerless s
hips
tamine
graves & kebab, Arcanoa & pipes, bells
the empty church — comes at mid
night
watch
dumb gu
y,
tter,
disembodied laster
sits in my rocking chair
fires my grandpa's
pipe

oh, I am surprised the "hash?", yes, I am
and today we'll talk?
starts heartbeat, pushes the pipe, smoke gushes from his
hat, "I bring news from the city"

Colleagues

I dropped the busker brand, I would love to be him
be 50 again
I was, however, much older, & the young man sighed
again
„I'm a loser-boy, boy”
I don't have a script of life
by nature – it is not a matter of years, or burnout, but
look at me, 500y/o carrion
that still smells
of
dawn perfume
& never has enough
of
informed, legitimate
kicks in the back
from older, compliant
colleagues.

Hymn to Her

the reality!
vegan bar, 2 teas
endive salad
meditation of her January morning
better than millions of unnecessary lines
this particular mix of minimalist
melodies & sex that can only exist here
& now, in incarnation of time
in milliseconds given to her
by all the Bodhisattvas, somewhere
between one bounce of her skirt & cold steamcloud of her mouth
toying the pastel purple
of moonrise
she, the night current
go(i)ng

oh, ring finger of night
left handed green openwork
Katherine
open the door!, sprinkled with rust
& loneliness – so, boldly, as befits a lady,
shaking her hips, she enters the „Little Zoo”,
passing through vintage shops, hash ‚Dam cafés,
Seventh-day Adventist church,
leather tiled drugstores, torn ragged warehouses,
cut canvas ateliers,
vegetarian restaurants, dig katzenjammer patios
paving slabs in billions, snobs & drunks
& pigeons & rats
meaningless storm cats
busking/screwing on the piss-covered stairs
cut back to the first scene
was midnight

she only tastes a tease
of a fourth element, now pushing bravely up
already close to absolute
over which she can only
elevate
to void bliss
or a universe, or saint madgirl
feasting on
toxic districts, petrifying herself
to toothpicks
it is no longer, however, relevant
neither this nor that road
because here, in „Little Zoo”, in a silly silver cage,
a wintry sedated, tufted
cockatoo, cries
out a Coleman
solo
& Katherine laughs sweetly, un
certain

„oh, nirvana!” – a billion pa
wing slabs cry,
cry back softly at her
&
she remembers the past life:
7 years of love, free, but never in
Nepal, or sweet, though
loved
as only a wise man can love,
the loves that he loved
& thing – the things he called things
& now
at the end of my flesh line
I give up to
nonsense
where everything belongs:
her hand
& parks of childhood
enlightened by laughter
of cruel reviewary
ships – passing us slowly,
carelessly
anonymously

nakedly emerging
in full bloom gaze
behind the dawn clouds, wild crescent
burst into loud, cheap winechicken laughter, „Bridges!
Show me some!”
there are no, Buddha babies,
„forms finite”, „ideas”, or „make senses”
& „bridges”?
you scream „Show me!”
I jokingly record
a song:
best of all – there is no Buddha, no lotus
flowers, which sprang from under his
proverbial feet
so Buddha babies, what have you pursued?

ain’t the trick
to wake up,
buy a cockatoo,
eat your salad & pay the right price?
perhaps there’s more, as in sea
or space songs… but one satori’s enough
so sell it back
to your hunter
he paid the twice price
already

we cut now back to the scene
years later

yes, all love creatures seemed to say „hello”
to her hungry spirit vagabonding
the lightless
hour
only I said „goodbye”, &, easy to tell, it worked out
in the end
that’s only now, I’m guessing, beginning

"Before I was an Angel"

I remember jungles in the morn mist
giant stars on exodus
angels, butterflies in armor
shooting red squares
of patience, wait…
beaten to death by police
somehow I passed through
saw black&white scenes
in the courtroom – judges yelling
this&that, policemen&doctors marching in line
bringing the zone to life
giving out straitjackets of fog
glasses of official vision
inhabitants seem happy, deafened w/ triangular
alien leeches in food & beverages,
consumed daily w/ pride, saluting
the homeland, pierced on spikes
of amusement, drowned in puke of entertainment
fooled by the steel-colored sky, who controls the
opiate controls the future
what was it anyway? birth on this planet
is punishment, man, such punishment is satori:
when you’ve seen the absolute reality
trivial monsters of power won’t rule you
they’re nothing, cowards of shade
toying the id their doctors prescribed me
images? I’ve got’em, lots enough to punish
the punishing cogs, small rat-faced
Goebbels-shaped pricks of inertia
late for the 3rd world war
plotting revolutions in introverted windowless
cabinets, crawling on
words? lots enough to disarm the police states
of the world, with one spit of poison
per 20 million dead pigs
drugs? I am the walking drug – causing death
in the 3rd world druglands
to see children reborn in civilized countries
I should’ve seen the masters, masters of
control, but all I’ve seen were madmen switching
roles with leaders, leaders chained to liberty’s
ankle, raising from the carpet some scumbag dirthole
shat on, happy in a locale
of absence – what was it anyway? do I wanna see this
world, after I was an angel? do I wanna see this, before
I was an angel? it’s a madhouse! deathcamp! funfair!
escape! escape! you will be angels too
but not if you won’t notice

"The Museum Countenance"

dog leash hydrant sunshine
beam of asphalt wisdom
seeing Christ face in this great cloud there
whatever winters your face
whatever opiates me
note after note, night after
night daybreak sleepwalk
I couldn’t care less
and call these corners “honey”
language without time
symbols without backgrounds
ghosts dancing
on valium
filmed from soapy windows
unconscious poor angel beings
on platforms, expecting horizons
twixt stations, emperor
whimsical beginnings
smiling mellow smiles
a sum of simple-minded lifetimes
focused on the perfect
shot erected scene steel
makes my evenings interesting
diplomatic curators of vision
slowly lose the journey
in sympathetic clouds of
forbidden districts
roaming with
beasts of museum countenance

"Unbreakable Spirit"

He who lives in Getz’s solo
broken colored glass
half-broken windowpanes
tangled sorely in a ball of
surgical threads

he who sleeps w/ Verlaine
breathing underwater
nourished by the sun’s afterglow

he who speaks w/ mice
singing pavement cantatas
w/ a tail

he who walks
the city tops
trawling under its puddles
of resignation
as in the daily breeze

he who confronts the shadow
dancing
in smoky cabaret
partitions
in the red light
of cancan

he who never sleeps
& never changes rags
looking everywhere
where refusal can lurk
radical
call & response
 
he who copulates w/ angels
to trade them later
w/ demons
for a handful of
budget
cigs

he who never dies
& never really lived
he who calculates maneuvers
of self-destruction

he who knows
& feeds supreme
pigeons of rhythm
burping loudly
smiling

he who lost everything
he to whom Buddha
looks up to

"Cliffs of Victoria"

cliff-like slow man – Dante creature
across the western terror
crawls, endless supply
of loneliness
in unclean tubes
of words
forming snow bird
grotesque

oblivion was the tangent
expression
circumstances
trial
“we are the end” – imbecile
voice, boiling

lifeless hemispheres
whine
some were eyes of the city
living
expression

patience was the call girl
interesting
discontented
bitterness
“she is the way” – buried
height Victoria

Ride the Flower U-Bahn

Berlin, four seconds to midnight
happy routes took beastly
course, straight to
modern heaven, dismissing the post-
wise pill droppers apply
to their suits, honey months
passing with the show girls
young ears cheeks in circle
modern heaven

is there “plan two”, in case
the big smoking arm of law
ray guns wiser fingers
beginning station again, beginning
boy and line – hurrying not to miss
the flower u-bahn
kiss the flower u-bahn

by common blood
we’re dead civilization
impelled by facileknowledge
grey down silhouettes
smoking from the all-knowing
stand skull
drilled into locks
on menagerie cells –
young skulls learning
inside

invincible tombs
watch busy bare years
an agony

"Ra?"

instant continents drive on
looped food
studied papers are everywhere: acceptance,
the discussed mind; age
and thought as scraps
walls cloud motor
idealized, poeticized –
climbing aboard
hair buses, expecting cage wishes
to end
where highways develop
clustered tasks and metal Ra – out
there collapsing
extra traffic
being weights nothingness
mere bagfuls of happy
where far eyes have desertion
on the rocks
in a beautiful uphill house
in vacant gardens
watering a took seen afternoon
pathetic money
on rotten eggs
laughed born belonging

4 A.M. 5th Cup of Coffee

slam the wing boy
break another seal

bongo jazz
rockets on
roof-tops of colony – just an image
walking by
the room and moldy labels

rotten veins
staring at the porn spread
thinking of descending markets
not wanting poems
anymore

slices of death
and teenage waistcoats
selling what poetry
doesn’t

smart ass wanna-be
philosophers
eat rich bread with honey
leaving me matchsticks
and Colorado
cigarettes
American in name
communist in taste

to them I’m an Indian
meal on their pan
thirsty for blood
to review
for their own
egocentric
purpose

play that jazz, pharaoh
I’m skill scene,
suckers.

"Stoned, with Oceans Separating"

interest unwrinkled
cap came
wanted her – burned late (I answer only
for my friend
and nostrils)
you left and the well-cut
laughed
impassive, distant-coffee, quietly
black
big tree drop, accustomed to my almost singing;
hear the stop
you for he, about to play over happy
be her seen
cannot predict
my future
turning beautiful
was perfect; but the unspeakable
is least predictable
to interest you
came to this or his
who cares
we’re stoned
with oceans
separating