Berlin October 1982

Berlin
October
1982
A morning Pan-Am flight from Hamburg
A Geldstadt
Money City
To Tempelhof
West Berlin
Behind the Iron Curtain

Henri Flesh et moi
DJ und Tursteher
Nachtclub Leute
Working Bsirs for the Reeperbahn pimps.

Templehof Gray morning Taxi
Zum der VierZeitenJahren Hotel
Each carrying a small bag
Only have
Two grams of Persian brown
We're remaking Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F
A novel about teenage hookers
Without the writer
We left her in Hamburg
She's safer there__ I look out the window For a familiar face Amongst the unfamiliar faces 1978 Clover The blonde runaway fled New York And a Texas oil baron Fled New York for Berlin East Berlin The orher half of here West Berlin After her departure Two postcards Both from the other side of the Iron Curtain Her new master A KGB colonel "Looks like you only more scars." I have a few more than four years ago Nothing one here looks like Clover Viele Blonded Kein Clover later__

Check into the hotel
Concierge looks like Dirk Bogarde
From THE NIGHT PORTER
A Nazi hiding in plain view
Forty years after the Fall of Berlin
Maybe sixty
A young man in 1945
Not a stray hair out of place
No click of his heels
Still everything about him Nazi__

We unpack
Huff some Persian brown
I wish it were China White.
Change into bathing trunks.
Both of us
Greyhound slim
White as Johnny Thunders
We swim in the tiled pool
It dates back to before the war
The Great War.
1914-1918
Our grandfathers served in France.
Long long ago__

Two couples exit from the sauna.
Speedos for the men
Bikinis for the women
Older
The men
Former Nazis
Proud___

They never lost the war
Henri is French.
He sees them too.
For what they were and are
"Salauds."

They see us for us
Auslanders
I stare at them
Mutter
"Nazis."

The word crosses the pool
They hear it
They know who they were
And who they are
I get up
Get my towel
We leave
Turn
Spit on the floor
"Nie weider."
Never again

On Kurdammstrasse
Wealth
The West
Zoo Station in the afternoon
No whores
No action
Eat Eisbein
Pig foot
Drink Berlin Weisse Bier
At night
Go to Der Dschungel Disco
Dance with TVs
Share Persian brown.
At least this isn't Berlin 1945___

In the AM we go to the East
The Berlin Wall stretching north south out of sight
This side graffiti
The other side
A Death Zone
Ladnmines, dogs, and snipers
Through Checkpoint Charlie
To
East Berlin
Passports bitte
A squat female border guard
We are of interest
For thirty seconds
Willkommen zu
Democratic Deutschland Republik
The DDR
The Workers Paradise Alles ist in Ordernung___

A walk through the ruins
Bullet holes in the buildings
From April 1945
All scars of battle in West Berlin
A Trabant scuttles by
Like an out-of-control lawnmower
No people on the streets.
Very few in Karl Marx Platz
Parking anywhere.
On a back street
Nothing to buy in the shops
The sound of boots
A Soviet patrol
Goose-stepping
Like Nazis
Never again__
Later
A German cellar bar
Order Berliner Pilsner
For the twelve people at the tables
No one drinks them
They are all Stazi Henri says
Secret police
Like the Gestapo___
We leave East Berlin
Without even a postcard.

Back in the West
Capitalism on the K-Damm
We have Persian smack
We
Free
Both of wish Christine F was with us.
Henri more than me
They are something.
At now for now
In both West and East Berlin
Fur Immer and always__