Berlin, John Holten
We speak to you in one language and to you in another, we do not wish to give ourselves away or limit ourselves, we are open and ready to confuse because we are not at home, because yes we are homeless, because we do not know each other, because we contain multitudes and our hatreds define us more than our loves.
We are three, maybe four people and do not stop to think that you know any one of us better then another, or that even your slight acquaintance with one of us blocks out the others, we are unknowable in our infinities like the sounds of an orchestra going out of tune or brave men dying slowly in fear.
We have no voice, we have no accent, we come from nowhere and have no centre, we are unknowable and shapeshifting with one face for you and one for anyother because we wish to please ourselves by deceit and falsehood and the changing of our failing identity.
We pass the nights in fire with each other like dancers gone wild to the music of their ancestors enhanced through the sphere of atavistic joy complete and total in the world of now that is fed by the past that is always on the verge of toppling us into each other like the daughters of gods gone mad on the shock of fucking mortals.
We sing songs with bad words that make up anthems for the less fortunate of the world because they will never get to hear them like we get to hear them that is clear and precise well ordered and sounding like choirs of army’s left behind on a planet that’s become uninhabitable.
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Cycling home on our own sometime we become the obvious, playing the Cynosure we are the cypher for others and manymore, ones who forget the name of ourselves, but what can we do but carry on, writing the things that noone will read because we won’t be proud enough to show them our frights of work halfdone.
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We are together alone and looking at being alone, reflections to the homeless, in Montmartre behind the basilica and the road has a hedge of verdant vines and there is night & streetlight & you are sad because your ex sleeps nearby & we drink beer on the steps above all else & you shouldn’t be driving but you do, down the boulevards, and in my dreams we’re going down Sepastabol the wrong way, but only in my dreams, awake we’re on our own.
We smell of our bodies and masturbation, our lovemaking puerile first time and evermore: our minds joined by strangers in darkness, only lighted upon with the focus of glory holes.
Reaching over with our long nails we try and pick the scabs and lumps of dandruff under our matted hair but we protest that we’re like apes nothing more but it gives us so much pleasure like the well timed coming of our orgasms under roofs indoors.
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We say goodbye to each other on Bornholmerstrasse, we say goodbye to ourselves on the road home in Louth, or first road, the road of our first darkness; we lose ourselves on it as moon alone lights stones endless and ourselves are waved goodbye to, we become one with a world beyond islands.
We grow.
We say goodbye to each other on the quay of Pankstrasse unterbahnhof and once again a train carries us away, like at eastcross or Gare du Nord or Oslo sentralstasjon, we go on, we carry on, with precision and ease.
We leave each other with tears and peristalsis going wrong, at Zentral Omnibus Station, airports, doorways to new homes. We walk alone and go forth and each time we think we’re joining a party that’s been arranged for us singly when really it is just a waiting group, a waiting room, in caravan, that more or less or great and worse is not for one but noone and we go on.
Regardless.
We are three, maybe four people and do not stop to think that you know any one of us better then another, or that even your slight acquaintance with one of us blocks out the others, we are unknowable in our infinities like the sounds of an orchestra going out of tune or brave men dying slowly in fear.
We have no voice, we have no accent, we come from nowhere and have no centre, we are unknowable and shapeshifting with one face for you and one for anyother because we wish to please ourselves by deceit and falsehood and the changing of our failing identity.
We pass the nights in fire with each other like dancers gone wild to the music of their ancestors enhanced through the sphere of atavistic joy complete and total in the world of now that is fed by the past that is always on the verge of toppling us into each other like the daughters of gods gone mad on the shock of fucking mortals.
We sing songs with bad words that make up anthems for the less fortunate of the world because they will never get to hear them like we get to hear them that is clear and precise well ordered and sounding like choirs of army’s left behind on a planet that’s become uninhabitable.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cycling home on our own sometime we become the obvious, playing the Cynosure we are the cypher for others and manymore, ones who forget the name of ourselves, but what can we do but carry on, writing the things that noone will read because we won’t be proud enough to show them our frights of work halfdone.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We are together alone and looking at being alone, reflections to the homeless, in Montmartre behind the basilica and the road has a hedge of verdant vines and there is night & streetlight & you are sad because your ex sleeps nearby & we drink beer on the steps above all else & you shouldn’t be driving but you do, down the boulevards, and in my dreams we’re going down Sepastabol the wrong way, but only in my dreams, awake we’re on our own.
We smell of our bodies and masturbation, our lovemaking puerile first time and evermore: our minds joined by strangers in darkness, only lighted upon with the focus of glory holes.
Reaching over with our long nails we try and pick the scabs and lumps of dandruff under our matted hair but we protest that we’re like apes nothing more but it gives us so much pleasure like the well timed coming of our orgasms under roofs indoors.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We say goodbye to each other on Bornholmerstrasse, we say goodbye to ourselves on the road home in Louth, or first road, the road of our first darkness; we lose ourselves on it as moon alone lights stones endless and ourselves are waved goodbye to, we become one with a world beyond islands.
We grow.
We say goodbye to each other on the quay of Pankstrasse unterbahnhof and once again a train carries us away, like at eastcross or Gare du Nord or Oslo sentralstasjon, we go on, we carry on, with precision and ease.
We leave each other with tears and peristalsis going wrong, at Zentral Omnibus Station, airports, doorways to new homes. We walk alone and go forth and each time we think we’re joining a party that’s been arranged for us singly when really it is just a waiting group, a waiting room, in caravan, that more or less or great and worse is not for one but noone and we go on.
Regardless.
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