Elsdorf, Düsseldorf, Erbendorf, Greiz
Gengenbach, Hilchenbach, Kelsterbach, Schleiz
Siegburg, Lichtenberg, Wesenberg, Jülich
Schnackensee, Radensee, Dillensee, Munich

Delbrück, Kindelbrück, Bersenbrück, Sußen
Eibelstadt, Diemelstadt, Glückenstadt, Stößen
Traunstein, Taunusstein, Uffenheim, Zwönitz
Ziegenrück, Innenbrück, Osnabrück, Zöblitz

Wietmarschen-Schwartenpohlerbruch

We’ve got sweat-slicked brows, tuffs of loose, knotted hair
Our limbs dumbly droop and we stand on the roof

Of a three story flat up in Prenzlauerberg
Near five a.m. when the night’s at its end

When we shuffle our shoes and sometimes tip the *****
From the bottles that we’ve all left scattered around

Then the beer trickles down and it spreads on the ground
And turns the rooftop tar a shimmering black

I feel through my shirt the thick summer heat
The hairs on my arm, the trees in the street

Are bathing alike in a warm morning dew
And the cigarette smoke we let slip from our throats

Catches the first red rays as the sun shows its face
Through the chemical haze out in east Lichtenberg

We face the source of the light as it floods through Berlin
Not the city we know in this tangerine glow

In this rich warming shine that is washing our eyes
Black industrial pipes start to wiggle and writhe

And their steam hits the scaffolds, whose
Metal fingers grow limber as they stretch through the street

To shake the red trees from their lumbering sleep
Then the leaves that they drop start to flee and get caught

In the stares of facades in the communist bloc
With the refusal of death on their hot, heaving breath

The parks are all built out of paper and gold
With fountains that spew streams of molten stone

Our apartment stands firm in the boiling sea
Of the scars of old days which swell, throbbing like waves

It’s the city lain out, moving, alive, and just like that
A light, filmy rain sprays a sheet on the town

We try to claw it away, but the curtain stays down
Then we stir, soaked in the sun and the rain

It’s the start of the day
And we can go home to sleep and dream of sunlit Berlin

When we discuss love
We don’t tend to talk
about the way it creeps up on you.

how it went from trying to remember your brother’s names to “will they be coming too?”

It starts the same, but just a little different. There’s just that little more fun. That smile that creases around your eyes that little bit more.

And while moments are exhilarating and freeing, we still hold back slightly.

Till that moment.

Hit like lightning. Realizing all you’ve ever wanted is sitting in front of you with their knees tucked up gazing at a movie you knew they’d like.

But the way the lightning crackles inside you, reverberating through every cell to let you know the depth of this realization and the fizzle of lichtenberg figures as that love is etched into your skin.

It’s seeing the bits of life that are trivial, but looking forward to every second because it’s with them.

And it’s knowing they could walk away at any second.
But knowing it’ll be okay.
Because you’ll have gotten to experience, that one of a kind struck by lightning moment.
and proudly carry those scars for the rest of your days.

--iii of cups, reversed--


before i fall asleep
i watch you dance on the ceiling

neon blue and purple skies
silhouetting bodies
growing blurry and distorted by bass and
***** waters flowing out
waterfalls through straws flowing out
through me

crashing into the mattress uneven and seeping
a beat i reluctantly match

raising toasts to nothing
to last nights
and all the nights you’ll spend on airplanes and car rides
to states i’ll never travel

i go to sleep
and i watch you dance on the ceiling

***** waterfalls spilling endlessly from upturned glasses
seeping through my blanket


--the tower--


it’s a sigh when lightning strikes
and neon lights go out

it's easy
to light all my candles
and flicker east toward the window
curled and waved and cresting and silent
a thousand miles away from you

it pains me to say: and it just so happens that the culprit in question was a Muslim... oh hell, i could have all the Malcolm X positivism concerning Islam about how it's the grand ethnic plateau... it pains me to write a near cliche of current affairs... i was open minded enough to emerge from Catholic bureaucracy without being confirmed... apostate that i am... i was open minded and trying to short-circuit the microchip implant of god in my mind... i was ready to do all those things and immerse myself in free secular love society... but after a certain incident at the stated location (https://goo.gl/MKNAWZ) i wasn't given much choice... my heart hardened and i became prone to zeal of throwing **** around - a Zealot without a definite grounding - i wish i could undo everything, but at the suggested U.R.L. is where it all began / after the incident i didn't start a cult, i phoned my ex-girlfriend begging her to come and meet me with bread and water... that's what defying the munchies does to the mind after the terrible has already happened, that damnable coercion of the politics of experience... you see me running around the amazon rain-forest with a bunch of zombies citing fragments of the bible and waiting for their salvation in a suicide pact? you can't be frank these days! you trying to keep calm and continue? what do you think i'm trying to do? fiery-tongued stink up a pulpit?!*

i don't know if i write good, i mean,
i enjoy what i write sometimes -
so i guess it must be bearable rather than good -
along the path i spotted philosophy
books that use really airy words and nothing
concrete in terms of grammatical
classification to shorten argument (but i do
like spaghetti waffling to be honest,
unlearned to read a novel with many characters,
instead learned to adore how philosopher
change between pronouns and not a single
character pops up, true to narration, and
not a single act of distancing and claims of
persona) - i can do with philosophers despising
poets (primarily for not reading their works)
but it has come upon us that poets hate
poets... but you know what? i'd give up
whatever natural ability i have for this form any day,
just so i could get a natural night's sleep,
and go back to manual labour and all my prior
physical strengths like riding a bike -
i'd return to where my soul was - that long
forgotten ease of thought that never cared to
be materialised into a poem - i'd give up every
single poem that i wrote, do a Anna Kavan
treatment to it, burn all the manuscripts,
promise to Franz Kafka that his books build burn...
or like Jack Spicer and Lorca... here's me and Kafka...
Franz?! are you sure? you want me to throw your
outpourings into the flames? you joking or
being half serious? you know, after your kinsmen
left Europe and the Muslims were invited
we've been arguing with tailors and not really
producing anything artistic... it's Sahara at the moment...
rap and viking metal... now the Europeans are
waking up and thinking: maybe the Jews really knew...
you see a face you trust a face - the English
called it Satan's postbox - free-stamps to boot...
seriously Franz? you being serious about your
work or aiming for a prophetic cameo at the
Opernplatz of 1933? on a personal note though:
if i could go back to the time when my brain
was not like an intro of a Marvel comic movies sequence
where evolved dna meshed with existing dna
(in my case blood forming Lichtenberg figures
in my brain, exciting grey matter and the "delusion"
of the grey citizen) i would - i wouldn't drink
to maximise the usefulness of sleeping pills,
i'd fall asleep naturally - i'd be breathing the fresh air
of the rooftops of London, and with good connections
might have ended up as a surveyor on construction
sites, given a degree in Chemistry -
whisk me away from my stupid heart, where i trusted
someone i can't be blamed for, where in a matter
of seconds i came to carry a tattoo of a crucifix -
and then, suddenly, my language exfoliated to
what it is now - i write like i don't care to speak for
such affections - i'm not saving anyone, i'm keeping
myself afloat - the once famous substance of ease
that allowed me to be thoughtless while high on marijuana
is completely in ruins - i can't rebuild the soul -
hence me, a body, and the mechanisation of the soul
that has for me become an entire world -
as some believe in a personal god with their soul intact -
i believe in an impersonal soul with god proven
in some kind of marriage of night and day and dislodged
moving stars - what remains personal is this writing,
and the mortality of my body, never to arise again -
for how can you caress a thought once more rekindled,
if the person who hurt you you played happy birthday
for on a guitar? i'd rather get gas chambered by a ******* ****;
cos if it ain't outright ****** it's physically modifying
to a disable former essentials - not quiet a burden
for the family... but the source of all ******* ridicules that
you almost see punch after punch and the zombie-gangrene
core of western hip-hip-hooray at a cricket match
with diluted Pimm's at 7 quid a glass!

i wanted to be a storm for you
to wake you up in the middle of the night
and make you notice
so i started raining and you left my tears alone
in an old bucket outside
my voice was the sonic wave of thunder
that shook your bedpost night after night
my goodbye hit you like a lightning bolt
the Lichtenberg figures mapped your body
lines leading to every place my hands have touched
the tree branch that scraped your window was speaking to you
whispering all of the times i said i love you
reminding you of all the times you never did
the lightning screamed them at the top of their lungs and
you never noticed but now that I'm gone
you pour the bucket over yourself everyday
now that I'm gone you trail your fingers along the lines
thinking of what you lost
now that I'm gone you stay silent
just to try to hear my voice one last time
now that I'm gone  
you listen for me in every storm