berlin

i'm wandering eastern europe and i'm wandering eastern europe and i'm wandering eastern europe. in bavaria and hessen, the buildings have professional paintings of advertisements and summer days and happy men and women in lederhosen.

east berlin is jagged concrete and jagged graffiti.

the marble steps before the famous schloss are fractured like broken teeth and large strands of grass cut through the cavities. the beggars and pickpockets rule the streets.

i walked through an open air flea market. a man sold the world's smallest steam powered ship. a tiny candle heated up water in a boat the size of a large cockroach. antique books lay in heaps on tables. antique doll parts and antique bric-a-brac, all lambent with the worn sheen of gentle aging. they look like a miniature graveyard on the table. all these tiny sculptures, aged into something haunting under the sun.

an old woman played an accordian. a young man reached into his back pocket and looked, impotently behind him at the back of the larger fellow that had just picked the young man's pocket with a bump.

i slipped out of the crowd, hands on my irreplaceables. I thought it was a church. It was a church, once. Now, it's a museum of glorious marble sculptures.

perfect nude women stood unashamed on pedestals. men holding their spears and wrapped in billowing cloaks were angry about us in the crowd, looking up at their nakedness. the most impressive statues were clothed in grecian tunics. the rippling of the sculpted cloth in the marble was more real than my denim jacket covered in road dust and train dust and the smell of a thousand second-hand cigarettes. i walked to the east to the east to the east so i could rest my head where the secret police might mave left a few machines behind to eat my dreams.

i made it to berlin all right. mayhap i'll leave all right, too. mayhap i'll dream all right, too.