in contrast to
I never wore a wrist watch
If the train was late, well, a watch didn't accelerate speed nor lateness
I never 'socialised' with people
whose language repertoire was controlled by the clock
As a boy, my father took me to theater rehearsals,
I always sat in the middle of the first row:
life on the stage was always imperfect
there were no spectators to distract me
an anonymous spectator mass
ever since impress me as humanities well ordered falsity
I never got used to television addicts
I always wrapped my school-books in newspaper;
then my father gave me expensive wallpaper that
caught the attention of my conformist 'mates'
I never had a gym bag;
once someone gave me two gym bags to take my stuff to Europe;
that told me I had too much stuff; all that stuff I left behind in Europe
I have no television, no radio, and thank you very much:
no car
I like differences and they're hard to find in conformity land
mind you, when I was a scholl-boy, we still lived in post-hitler-land
while on the 'other side' the last and final liberation
of ' the most liberated people in the world' was hailed:
they needed a Wall to proof it, a gated country as
if liberated from all unfreedom
as if freedom is a multi-annual perennial:
every year one wonders IF there's yet another bloom to come...
there was always the place where we lived and then there was the garden
and later, there was the forest
one was involved in survival,
the garden and the forest were the distance from corrupt civilisation
once living space and garden were gone, not confiscated
but 'liberated' for the 'new' species of men,
foodless living reduced everone to proper dimensions;
no one talked of 'spirituality' - that's consumer society surplus talk
poverty was not idealism nor mismanagement,
but pure plots and politics of a to be re-mastered humanity;
as if humans without rights are collective humanity
lots of contrasts to be added, but additions never benefit
an already perfected people:
that's why they only need children by the dozen,
each one leaning -as if natural - pro-creatively
like war-machines that fight life
I always skated on every pond that froze;
there was always a 'friend' that desparately unfroze
my mother always liked my friends
my father disliked it very much when I compared myself to OTHERS
one friend came with his motor-bike to fix it up in our garden:
my mother was furious that he uses me
what his high valuta parents forbid him to do
on their repected property
father said, people have a way to USE other people
all the way up to the party apparatus and their aligned churches
my teacher talked of the state that destroys individualism-
the state needs heroic sacrificers instead
you can never compare
only contrast some of my teachers who survived dictatorship
with the GI Bill professors who 'lived in the land of the free'
everything is past tense
since I was Cassius who 'always knew too much,'
my 'mates' always urged me to sell my voice to the radio
scary thought...
my uncle 'worked for the radio" and Hitler gave him the death penalty
which was never executed because Hitler shot himself first
while the Russians conquered what there was to conquer
one aunt knew China first hand
another aunt never stopped dreaming of her two sons, 18 +
coming back from Stalingrad
my father always reminded everybody
how everybody went nuts
when Hitler was handed power
another aunt was run over by a truck