German jazz: B & W

B & W
Standing there in the cold,
Way too old for this role playing bit.
I’d rather do a real-life skit.
I take out my puppets,
Gloves in the compartment –
My jacket pockets.
Play out a scene
From the master of modern tragedy.
Social emotions flying back and forth,
Saliva would have been my crack.

They enjoy my performance
And laugh,
And roll around in their graves.
They await my next move,
Knowing what’s going to happen.
Some serious dialogue
With anecdotes about flying coats,
Dying hats,
And subliminal communism.

This is a theatre jism of the highest worth,
But my stage leaves me cursed.
A cemetery filled with pompousness
And millions worth of gold.
In front of me
Two rectangles and boulders.
Two graves of much older souls.
Not nastily fancy like the temple across,
Tomb of a wealthy man,
Now and then casting a shadow over them.
They who knew all along.
You is who I’m referring to,
And the place where you so humbly rest,
Mrs. Weigel & Mr. Brecht.
Please allow my respects.

Intercontinental intermezzo: LOCALLY UNDER LINDEN

Locally under linden
Rothko, Rothko,
How do you touch me so deeply,
So briefly, or at least,
With so little?
How do you draw me
To a world so free from care,
Free from the position
To share my judgment with neighbors,
With figures around me?
You pull me in,
Leave me alone at the same time.
You make me understand
How evil must have felt about you
For a second, or two.
I fall back into reality
Confused, diffused,
Unattached from the world
I thought I knew.
I see fields of dark blue and orange,
But uncertainly so.
I examine your strokes
That I keenly let go.
I look for figures or reason
But fail miserably,
And my heart beats louder and louder.
The crowd around me
Fades more and more,
As their gasping a superficial sound.
The temporary location
Of merely one of your marvelous examples,
Perfectly timed
Under the white bass wood of Berlin –
A perfectly belated sin.
And I thought I didn’t care for history.
But here I am, and so is your No. 18.

 

German jazz: THE CLAP HUNT

The clap hunt
In this city you wrote
A poem denoting your fears
Reflecting the tears you let
Over being a man.
Kaspar your name, if I may
Be so frank –
Pol Patt when you were pink.
And like me, I think,
Addressing yourself in safe surroundings.
The sounds of your writing
Moved me to tears,
And now they are
Here, making this page as unreadable
As Kafka’s first draft
Of his letter to his old man.
Your rhythm is
Quite clear, but your questions far greater
And many lengths more dear.
Precedent of many thinkers
From plenty other cities and eras.
Negligent of Third Reich liking,
Or at least endangering
To the insecure little brats.
Indeed, self-reflection was
Like a vice to how those
Medieval rat bastards do.

[“Zis painting depicts
My fear as I
Torture zis shit Jew, here.”]

No, none of that
For ol’ Goebbels and Hitler,
Iconoclasts of the highest class
Out to mash your stash of poetic
Trash – confessional,
Metrosexual romantic crap.

German expressionism, may I add?

We thank you, Klabund,
For your questions,
Rejections from human life.
We thank you for degenerating
The generates to death.
Do us part, Alfred,
Take us away one more time.
My face lights
Up, my brain warms up
When you rhyme…

Praguian poe: I’M SORRY, PRAHA

I’m sorry, Praha
Tower bells
Towering just above
The snow white snow.
Prague depicted
Like a picture show.
Picturesque it glows
With pastel colored
Buildings,
And bronze statues
Black as coal.
Maria rubbed to gold.
Across the bridge
The wind lies down
In Kafka town –
Ironically the only place
To pee freely.
West of the river,
Shivering, unzipped,
Eclipsed, bedazzled,
And stripped.
Hot wine turned to
Yellow snow.
Urine section,
Let ‘er rip!
Let go in this city –
This wondrous
Chitty-bang chitty,
If the Republic
Dark and gritty.
Beware, Chitty,
Of the storm underway.
Be ready for some heavy beating.
Be prepared,
But believe in better days.
Only hope will teach you,
Strengthen you to cope with
The inevitable evil approaching.
The withdrawal effect
Of capital dope.
Please have faith
In your indestructible beauty,
No matter how many poets
And politicians piss on you.
I’m sorry…

Praguian poe: @ THE CAFÉ LOUVRE.CZ

@ the café Louvre.cz
Here I am, Kafka,
At your disposal.
Now what may be
Your indecent proposal?
Let it not have anything
To do with bohemian beauty
Next to me.
Not up for that challenge,
Gladly bound to Dutch love.
And love the last matter
On your mind, if I am right.
Still, their presence gifted
From above…

Back to business,
You and I –
My fellow mad man,
What have you got planned tonight?
I will run by your homes
Where my admiration was born.
But what do I do now,
In this place you adorned?
Cappuccino & cabbage,
Your voice crisp & clear,
Resounding in the smoky salon,
This café you held dear.
Is this what you think of
When I ask you for your thoughts?
I should have known, of course,
How cabbage gets you lost.
Caramelized and well,
Like a true immortalized self.
I dwell in your spirit
In spite of this moment.
And then I lose myself in the end.
Please read the note I left you:

“Franzsikuszi,

Should you return here
Before you change into a pest
Write me back, please,
Leave a note.
I would love to hear from you.
Your true self.
A feeling arises
You wished the same for your
Predecessors.
Philosophers & professors
Decorated this place.
And you paved the way for
Insects with fantasy.
Ants will be my readers…

– From a dear friend, IG Karfield”

Viennan verse: MADDER DANCE

Madder dance
The epiphany
Of insanity,
The mark of genius
As a human characteristic.
Bourgeois overthrown
By his music,
Autistic and faint,
Sophisticated and great.
Something to dance to
It ain’t…For some.
Something to do with
The classics –
Something like canvas or paint
In a world full
Of paintings and pain.
Or,
Just something to dance to.

This crazy bastard
Absorbed life from the sane,
Put it in perspective,
With angles, triangles
And sinful,
Sonar Saints for
The faint of heart.
Part of me is thinking
This is a ship of the shams.
A charter sinking
Like rock stars jamming,
Slamming, blowing stamina
Until the morning
Blows their cover –
And a re-up never comes.
Part of me is thinking
Mozart is as narcissistic
As your first lover.
Part of me is wrong.

Oh, come, and let
Me hear ye songs,
Ye crazy old bat
With ye hair did on.
Sing me to life
A little princess,
One with petite tits,
Scarlett lips,
And a t-shirt on
That says:
‘Mozart rocks,
But the Don sucks.’

One more note
Of neurologically funny
Money and copper,
Gold harps, violins within,
Inexistent choppers,
And the end is
About to begin.
Again, this next of kin –
If cankerous minds king –
This prodigal son
Marks the beginning
Of a new time:
The époque of crazy
Civilized forever.
The piano concerto
Just may be the jazz
To our bodily
Compositions…
Human as we are.

The Don

Walked through Burggarten to see Mozart’s monument, after failing to find a café where he would have visited – it doesn’t exist. “Café Mozart” or “Mozart Café” across the Albertina surely isn’t it.

Plus, I didn’t have four seventy (coffee with milk) on me.

Finally, I found his picturesque and statutory ass, shining from underneath the cover of snow in nearly the same color. I told him I would be back with a Wiener melange and a vanilla-flavored cigar from afar.

And so I was.

Like all the coffee with milk in Vienna, this one was unbearably tepid. Indeed you are better off getting a glühwein or orange punch if your goal is to gear up and warm up your coldest of sides.

Funny enough, I never needed to warm up at any given Viennan moment – as if the snow was in fact like a blanket, or my near-Dutch heart just felt right at home, no matter how little fat covering it.

No, I just needed my daily dose of caffeine. Besides, I had a date with Wolfgang, and he loves the smell of burning beans and vanilla in the morning, or so I imagine.

A secret that must be shared so I don’t look like some statue-loving fetish freak, is that Mozart is actually buried right there in the Burggarten; not in the cocky Zentralfriedhof, but not in the common people’s St. Marxer Friedhof either.

So, in order to discuss the thing I needed to discuss with this genius slash fellow ‘humad’ man, at the Burggarten is where I needed to be. Got out my transistor radio, put it on 1487 Hz, lit my Stimmung and enjoyed the composer’s company and thoughts for several ball-freezing hours.

(He was truly amused when I told him I had fallen fast asleep standing upside down during Don Giovanni. Indeed, he is convinced it was his least enticing opera ever made. Indeed, while the temperature belonged to my heart, my balls did what they did despite of it.)

Moment of Sanity, Part III: The Human

Moment of Sanity, Part I: The Genius
Moment of Sanity, Part II: The Mad Man
Moment of Sanity, Part III: The Human

Art and the human. The human. The human in me is living through the faces of cultural Europe. Let’s make one thing clear: I am not human. Nor am I the ultimate icon of denial for Post-modernist thinkers that is the humble medium of the universal truths of human emotion, human’s true eye on reality. But, yah, no-one said I was, so I’m not quite sure how I came to emphasize that here.

I am merely a writer from another dimension with the desire to share his soul, and how it is thrown back by the force of the human beings denying its existence in the face of their reality. It brings me to life…A life I don’t need, as it is one in which art is facing total annihilation.

Ah, humanness: Gaia forbid that you ever be left uncaptured by the brush holding, pen licking, clay sticking, stage tricking, string plucking, dicks ****** freaks and geeks on this earth that we call artists. Mozart, Kafka and Brecht. I am walking in their footsteps…And I’m sad I came too late.

The traces of great men with great minds in times of terrible trouble. And it occurred to me that none of these traces will be captured in a glass box, plaster casted to outlast the shit storm we are currently concocting.

It occurred to me that these traces needed to be refreshed…

Turkish rhyme: THE VENTRILOQUIST OF DISORDER

The ventriloquist of disorder
Now, you know
A man is really
Mad when he
Obsesses over
Someone else’s
Madness;
You know an
Artist really
Matters when
He does so with
Bitter sadness.
Gives an infected
Transsexual a
Glance at itself,
In the mean
While he comically
Belly dances.
A video archive
Of Orange County
Bounty hunters,
Porn stars,
Hippies and prancers.
 
This Turkish
Man whom I
Hadn’t heard of
Before I engaged
In this artistic
Battle –
I feel ashamed –
Turned my
Skepsis into rattles
Of the brain cells,
Partly psychological,
If convention
Is the cattle,
And the art I
Surrender to saddled
Across the backs
Of the horses we
Use to wrangle.
 
Jump from one
Frame of Beta
To another,
Like a son cheating
On his mother,
With an obsession
For florescent colors;
OCD, collections,
And such.
 
This post-modern
Hero is the doctor
Who likes to wander,
The analyst coming
Out from underneath
The disease on which
It ponders.
And it catches
Infectious, delusive
Effects as it
Projects its subjects
Obsessively.
 
The analyst turns
Catalyst, and the
Audience the doctor
Of a second-hand
Patient,
Patiently,
As it assumes
The examinee proctor.
And we study ourselves.
 
Thank you,
Ventriloquist man,
For being
Sickly inspired
By our sickness,
Humanity.

Greek rhyme: MYTH HUMMUS

Myth hummus
All of these
Socrates loving,
Ancient stone rubbing
Iconoclasts with
Plastic wraps around
The burgers they
Lavishly salvage
While they pass
Through the mountain
Of philosophical
Past,
Have managed to
Upset those grounds
Such that archeologists
Are mislead.
As the sign reads,
They said that
The Ancient Agora
Where Socrates
Bred on the troubles
Of men and ethics
And crap,
Is down by the
Temple which
Stands at the stem
Of this beautiful gem.
Yet my insides
Tell me that
History failed me,
And really,
The peoples
Of modern times
Have derailed me.

Follow the trail
Of self-employed,
Lyrical deception,
And you’ll sail into
The mystery of history.
Just note that our
Paths are unclear.
It seems, that
Concoction of Plato,
Socrates, the Great Ol’,
The artist’s sacred halo,
Pondered on peace,
Greed and envy
Right up here –
Between sunlit rocks
And ants crawling
In the atmosphere.
The steep, sleepy
Hills of green in
The shadow of the
Trees they breathe,
Just above the temple
That was built by the
Hands that Plato heeded;
In nature was the force
He needed to see this
Force is all we be.
World’s wisdom
Living with us,
Right and wrong
Hidden in songs
From that day on,
Sung by nymphs
And professional
Hymnists from the gym.
Those big ones,
With fire from their cracks.
And a fantasy is
Blamed for our troubles…