i'm trying to remember all the times
i was "subject"
to... being... assiociate
with a mis-application of ethnicity...
i'd walk down edgware rd.
with a half-Indian half-scouser
girlfriend, and i'd be approached
by muslim street preachy-vendors
being asked:
are you German?
   and i was like: internal dialogue:
iz ziß ver v vype ut
zee Ju?
i always replied: guess...
counter to German,
i woz eh Schveed...
             i gave up...
        but after a few more instances...
i voz alvayz: die deutsche...
oh... you think that the English
are no suspect?
   the innocence of being asked:
where are you from?
will always be countered
with... Leibzig...
or... Kiel...
               i almost felt like
an actor... all that was missing
was the schutzstaffel uniform
and a smirk of a catholic schoolboy
from: Witten, Bavaria...
oh... not unlike the reaction
from the movie falling down,
where some poor schmuck
gets lectured on the distinction
between a Japean and Korean
(does anyone really need
the correct -ese, "person"?) -
we all know that the ****
think they are the master race of
the asians...
so... why bother?
but i was kindly reminded,
the Muslims were all wet *****
asking me: are you zee gerrrrrrman?
you know how painful
it sometimes is...
        to play out the expected
question to the questioner's
leveling of surprise?
for me?
that's like asking me whether
i'm a ******* rushkie...
             no... i am not part
of any... "ummah"...
                      wasn't the dajjal supposed
to arrive from Babylon,
as the head of the Iranian army?
so i nod,
yes, i'm German,
and in England that's like:
visa...
     or... something that
the post-colonial former powers
do not fathom...
Germany might have given
birth to the Nazis...
but it didn't give birth
to the colonial bureaucrat...
feeble... a reader of Kant...
like me...
          whatever cocktail
of ****-wits and party-pleasers
is to come out of all this...
20 years into the 21st, grand opera,
of a century to end all centuries...
most of the time...
it's better that these
people understand that i am German
than figure out:
exotica postcard from
the nowhere that's Poland...
like: kommensie um! kommensie um!
like some hanzel und gretyl
witch...
          i play the German...
back where:
i'm just the "failed" generic
                                         similar...
but no...
i could tell apart a Thai from a ***...
and a *** from a Ching...
maybe...
but then a Maroccan from
a Libyan from an Iraqi
from a Saudi from a Yemenese?
well...
   am i alone?
looks like most of these, people,
can't tell the difference between
a German and a ******...
so...
                 what?
and more notably...
                               what?
           oh right... there's also a "now"?
pull me a sly Bogart
will you...
                 i need to forget
that James Bond didn't really exist...
*******... carry on Casablanca!
that's all that James Bond
ever was...
        carry on! Casablanca.