on the 28th of June I was here exactly two years
so it was time to shut down whatever can be shut down
of culture, of civilization
I drive no car, have no car, no tv, no radio,
only the computer eats 260 watts
and its the worst security risk ever designed by humanity
other than language's duplicity itself
at the end of the battle for Berlin,
Hitler made every household surrender their radios
and I played with that radio, made noise and music,
when my father told me
there's a death penalty
for not surrendering the radio,
and I got mad and madder
when I saw the huge pile of radios
at the street corner...
soon the Russian tanks rolled through our street,
soon after, the whole block was taken over,
we were forced to move out
then moved again
and my father sold the piano,
my last noise and music machine
to a Russian officer
and with that money we flew to the West
with the RAF out of a blockaded Berlin...
Hitler had committed suicide,
my uncle's death penalty was not executed
and another relative got off the jail's stone ground
where he was chained to a large steel ball - in my hometown
for telling a yoke about Hitler
BEFORE the dictator came to power...
there's never safety in words
Lots of churches were bombed out,
the Cologne Cathedral stood there 'forever' among the rubble-
unharmed, the train station had no glass left in its roof
yet soon the churches started with Jazz...
and as a boy I saw the defense attorney of the German Wehrmacht
getting into his Mercedes, police all over, but as a boy
I was so used to crowds moving coming and going
standing and watching: Wannsee Schloss or Reichstag rubble...
tanks rolling, trains loaded with people to above the train roof,
train after train
airplanes
bombs that shock the ground blew out our window frames
with my own eyes I saw Berlin burning
the night sky as red at night
as a red as an Arizona sun set claims to be
people were gone, neighbors where gone
we boys walked through the bombed out houses,
from basement rubble to basement rubble
my school friends lived somewhere within that rubble
their fathers gone, my cousins never to return
the Brandenburg Gate stood there surrounded
by mountains of rubble, rubble coming and going each way-
the boy, taken for a ride to the heart of history
yes,
history never a lesson is
merely a random series of experiences,
the nature of experience
per force repeats itself
series of brainlessness
connived spectacles
within forced traditions
coerced
bereft of love
within marriage of church
of copulation
all this for more of war's forced tourism
designed especially for distance watchers