I hate seeing your face, I really do
You painted me like a landscape, green and blue
Green with envy, Blue and subdued
I still question, what I mean to you
I try not to let the abandonment issues win
I try to reimagine myself partying in Berlin
I miss the blaze of the blunt, the bass in the club
I miss the days when I felt enough
without anyone other than myself

'Happily Ever After'
on The Wall across
my home, Berlin
is my Berlin

Yet I leaf through
a travel magazine, the sea
beckons, the mountains call
echoes Action! Action!

A man smiles at me
We are angels, I give
him my fear, lend
him my room

I need to go, away
from alone, be more
than my work, promise
someone loyalty

Thank you for sharing
The best thing in your life
I have a good time
Even though you make me cry
And if I could go there
The place I want to
Hope we both can see
Baby coz I love you

young people
swallowed up by the night
sacramental in its significance.

the supply of drugs
picked clean by
the small hours of the morning.

that limitless darkness?
that was something
that had to be acquired
by osmosis
slowly, over the years.

she opened her mouth.

the luxury of a
detached state of mind
lingered in the air.

the emotion within her strangled any words.

come inside
into the night.

Excerpts from “Travels with Einstein”
by Michael R. Burch

for Trump

I went to Berlin to learn wisdom
from Adolph. The wild spittle flew
as he screamed at me, with great conviction:
“Please despise me! I look like a Jew!”

So I flew off to ’Nam to learn wisdom
from tall Yankees who cursed “yellow” foes.
“If we lose this small square,” they informed me,
earth’s nations will fall, dominoes!”

I then sat at Christ’s feet to learn wisdom,
but his Book, from its genesis to close,
said: “Men can enslave their own brothers!”
(I soon noticed he lacked any clothes.)

So I traveled to bright Tel Aviv
where great scholars with lofty IQs
informed me that (since I’m an Arab)
I’m unfit to lick dirt from their shoes.

At last, done with learning, I stumbled
to a well where the waters seemed sweet:
the mirage of American “justice.”
There I wept a real sea, in defeat.

Originally published by Café Dissensus

Keywords/Tags: Einstein, Adolph, ******, Berlin, Jew, Jews, Arab, Arabs, Palestinian, Palestinians, Vietnam, Vietnamese, American, Americans, Yankees, Domino, Theory, Dominoes, Jesus, Christ, Bible, Christian, Christianity, Slave, Slaves, Slavery, Israel, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv

We Will Meet Again (for Berlin, East and West)
They loved each other very much.
That was evident when they were parted.
Tears of grief when they were forced apart.
An act of devastation never to be forgotten.
Made by ungodly people with the power of God.
Those in charge didn't see the young couple.
Didn't witness their tears, hear their shouts.
Felt no emotion when they issued the order.
To build a wall to cut a city in half.
Separating families and loved ones.
A nation and city torn in two.
People trying to flee as the last brick was placed.
Escaping any way they could.
Risking their lives to dream a future.
Braving razor wire, guards with dogs and the guns.
Being mercilessly gunned down when seen.
And still they fled their prison city and country.
Doing anything to get across The Wall.
Hoping for a better future in The West.
Not being split in two like the couple.
She in The East, he in The West.
Prisoners of The Cold War for simply being German.
Caught in a game of nuclear chess.
Superpower madness where hope and love disintegrate.
Decades of mistrust and hate poisoning our world.
A generation with paranoid peace.
Trustful tyranny illuminating the way.
For decades some held onto their dream.
Then one cold Berlin day it happened.
The Wall fell down and hope blossomed.
Some couples were finally together.
Middle aged, no longer teenagers.
Hard and bitter, not joyous and free.
But together at last after so many years.
Reunited city and nation.
A world no longer severed in two.
Tears dry and history remembers.
Stories are told proving love will endure.

do me a favor aight
when you go switch off the lights

close the door behind
you

pay attention to the lock it
makes a sound pay attention

do me this favor
you gotta do it cause

shadows everywhere
voices everywhere
enemies everywhere

ain't no fun though as
gang colors in the nineties

tag watts
tag berlin
tag harlem

shadows everywhere
voices everywhere
enemies everywhere

for twentyseven years
do me a favor aight?

i've been looking for a brother
i've  been looking for a mother

nobody knows about it
they don't know and they
don't have to

when they interrogate you
about last night
when they ask tell em:

i was asleep at night
as civilians do

no talk about turf
no talk about extortion
no talk about capital crimes

private matters
wat matter is you
lock the door baby

take me away from this journey
i am trapped in the land of placelessness

blind / hypnotized
route 36 / bolivia
deaf / treated with ultrasound
simultaneously

scarcely knowing
what all that means

i am feeling the rising of blood
a wave of heat like sandstorms

inevitability: willful / knowing / aware

i am putting myself at risk of dying
long ago i read about the risks and consequences
of my ******* abuse
pervaded them intellectually while

my heart remains deafly because
of *******
bitter
sear
aflutter and in panic

there is just:

one life
one heart
one body one man

man what are you doing?!?!
i am hollering into my inner
embracing the envelope
obsessed over bitterness
numb love
in the dungeon of plotted heavens
lofty as never before
is where i am running away from:
every day

in the 1920s there was a man
who they called "koks-emil"
he sold ******* in the nightstreets of berlin

the national archive has been keeping
a picture of him doing business with
two girls out of gangland we
can't see the face of the one standing left only  
her back

however her companion typifies precisely
what the drug creates in our souls:
a form that can not be imitated
like the effect of the drug

a form of longing and greed in the
girl's face

longing and greed
balancing each other
not one of
these states predominates

while beholding the girl i am becoming
horridly conscious
about myself
horridly about

my relationship with *******
my affair with *******
my love to ******* this
sounds sick?
indeed it is

we call it
suffering from an addiction

we call it
suffering from a dependency

become clean.
i wish you willpower
wish you strong luck
wish you peace at last

the rate of relapsing
******* users is vast
during the night

when the wind is
breezing mildly

when the stones of the cities
are breathing out the heat of the day

while you are
sneaking over the streets

while every street corner resembles
the very one where
koks-emil used to sell his product

while you are sensing the smell
of bitterness

while you are being preoccupied with
her face: her longing her greed

while you are experiencing
yourself:

more deeply
more soberly
and more knowingly
as before

while you
are reaching out your hands searching
with kidfingers for koks-emil

the guy with the warped corner of the mouth
the reliable / greedy one

the one who is always ready

a salesman has to be available for
every second of your longing
every second of your greed

koks-emil: your world is made of black and white
your hat is grey its bonnet is vanishing as your
shivering hands

hands that spread capsules
hands that grap at bills
hands that you use to brush away your sweat

**** between the lipps
shabby coat

koks-emil your spirit
blows through inner cities like gas fumes
a grin on your face coming from
lurid lights

you became immortal
you underwent rapid decades
you were an addict
you created addicts
you served addicts

the ****** expression of the girl
your child-like customer
remains for

all for everybody with a
*******-addiction

for all and for everybody
who depends on *******

for all and everybody
who is clean from *******

for all and everybody:
longing and greed

rest in peace girl

a world apart, i stood
where two universes had divided,
where a wall had fallen, crumbled
into dust and ashes of
the men who had attempted

to cross it;
with all their might and desperation
risked their lives so that
their children might one day
see freedom

with their wide wondering eyes
of naïveté and joy.
a world apart i stood,
desperately clinging to their stories:
their martyrdom;

the names i would never know;
the stories that would go
untold with nobody who knew
them, nobody to tell them
anymore.

a world apart i stood
watching the snowfall in
berlin, dampening the streets
where the death strip once
tore life from the innocent

in the name of separation;
the falseness of east and
west.
a world apart i stood,
glad that it was no more.