Karl-Marx-Allee

In May drizzle and
Bursting cloud,
The shoots shield the loose
Lying air, and I think
Of nothing but you.

I am in Richmond
And you are dismantling our bookcase,
Bulgakov and Nabokov,
Divorced, still harbouring
Last week's dust.

Your towel is left where you wept;
Wet washing litters the rack
In the kitchen, curtains flap,
And my wind-up clock stopped
With no one.

Now I cannot bare the
Sudden loneliness of trains,
and buses, and avenues in Kew;
And you, carrying wilting
silk dresses, bruised and new.

And my stomach is full of the
Indigestible bile of drink,
And the sorrow of early mornings
Lying in your dent.

Then I see us walking
Down Karl-Marx-Allee
In the dense dusk
Beneath the TV Tower,
Slowly suffocating

And I melt.

5 Songs About... Building

Kraftwerk - Metal on Metal



Peter, Paul and Mary - If I Had a Hammer



Tom Waits - What's he Building in There?



Lightinin' Hopkins - I'm Going to Build me a Heaven of my Own



Moderat - Rusty Nails

Oskar Nerlinger - Stadtbahn Von Berlin

False Syllogism

I am a character in one of those primitive racing games, the colourful scenery flies past me and I am static, bar the occasional impromptu sideways lurch.

The finish line, the solution, the redeemer reaches me, I don't reach it.

I clutch the steering wheel tokenistically. I fool the passenger beside me: I am not in control at all. The grain of the view through the rear window is incongruent; the scenery repeats itself every ten yards. Unheimlich. I am stuck, I am a rooted passenger and this will not cease until the end of the road arrives.

Bonnie Parker with Ford Model 18

One Hundred Years

Butterflies float into my room
In fatal, terminal yellow,
Blossoming with weary gloom,
Abandoning the sludge below.
Asphyxiated by the riotous chill;
Like the returning foetus
With an impulse to kill,
Dragging through the dew beneath us.

My heart's anatomy erupts
In the morning's bleak beams;
Choking and spluttering
Over last night's dreams.
If this rabble resists my death,
Darling - please call when I catch my breath?