Straight Berlin

Into the light of morning,
the great cars take olive oil to Marseille.
They seem to cruise sideways,
through the narrow alleys.

The sun in the sky,
is round as a pizza crust
burning still like a molotov cocktail,
even in the clearness of evening.

The moon finally tires,
and punches out early,
descending over an indigo sea.
Lazy, overpaid sonofabitch.

Mariesol has arrived,
and I am suddenly a prisoner.
Ah Berlin, both psych ward and cabaret.
In your clear canal`s waters
the men have given up kicking their feet,
through closed windows; looking downwards;
careless and hopeful.

I`m blinded to the tulips of the mountain,
fallen from windows, and in their final massive
closure, they are soiled and black.
They chant incatations for the 30th of November,
and Autumn`s final departure.

I am proud to be poor, and so full of distaste,
with my wool liederhosen,
and wrinkled, ill-fitting cuffs.
Marvelous how these ebony zippers
despoil my shoulderblades;

I am proud to be old,
and have but a sliver of life ahead of me.
Each stationary bit of nothingness I watch,
will but improve my complexion.
And clear up some of the wrinkles,
on the over-used map that is my ass.

Each stationary bit of nothingness,
covers the tracks to its end.
But it can still be found,
on the tip of my cock.
which I twirl playfully,
at everything I`ve seen before.

That deadness in my eye you see,
is due to the stale bread I ate,
this morning, at THE SWISS STOVE.
And my tired old mug
is but an overwrought lithograph.

Will I ever get out of Dusseldorf?
What time does the zoobahn open?

I was walking up 6th ave a couple of months ago, and I noticed a faded, peeling advertisement on the side of an old loft building. This was one o those large ads they would paint right on the bricks of a buildings sidewalls (very old New York). The ad was for some seriously outdated service, along the lines of LOUIE`S FURCOAT STORAGE, but the interesting thing was the phone number displayed at the bottom:

ALOGONQUIN 347

When did they get rid of that old phone routing system? And is there any way it could be revived? All over North America they prefixed phone numbers with names of things: Who thought those up? It seems like such a cool system.

I`m going to try and hunt down as many of the old prefixes as I can. The trick is to ask old-timers what their neigborhood routing was. Their eyes will tend to sparkle through the cataracts when they talk about the old days when a phone number...

In Bay Ridge was EVERGREEN
In North Beach was CHESTNUT (I think that`s what Anna told me)
(Springfield was KLONDIKE)

So go out in the streets of your own town or city! Talk to the lonely old guy who feeds pigeons in the park (ask him not to feed the pigeons) but also ask him what the old prefixes were where he lived and worked. There are tens of thousands of them and they`re all cool. With some coaxing I think Bob McMillan could be persuaded to mount a database on Filbert... Maybe there`s a contest here.

Last night was really interesting. It was only yesterday that I felt like I was filling in the time before my return to North America. As I saw it there was only two and a half days to go, and nothing interesting could possibly happen in two days. On top of that I felt heavy when I left Provençe, and I couldn`t understand why. When I left Paris for the south, I`d finally managed to reconnect with my old friend Thomas Brutschi here in Paris, whom I`d worked and been friendly with in New York. Thomas and I left it that we`d connect and have dinner once we were both back in Paris. This would be my last social call in France.
Thomas lives in a Paris suburb called Montreuil, which seems to be the Williamsburgh of said city. Actually, Montreuil is much cooler. You get the sense in Paris that they didn`t buy the hype throughout the 90s quite as much as us. Paris never went dot.com and it never fell into the whole political correctness thing. They probably didn`t need it. But I digress...

Thomas and I had a quiet dinner together in his really charming house, and then we sat and he told me of his family life. Never have I met someone who is so in love with being a father: It`s like a drug for him. I couldn`t help but feel that something went right in his life. Thomas made the right moves at the right times. Sitting by his fireplace, nodding my head slowly, I was struck with the sense that I had lived my whole life as a misfit - and contrary to what I`ve always tried to project, that is not something to be envied.

But there`s no crying in baseball.

In our rambling talks, we sort of touched on politics for a moment. Thomas expressed a feeling of unease at what he saw as dangerous changes occurring in the world. He mentioned the large presence of police and soldiers in Paris, and the new powers that the state was giving itself over the populace. I looked him right in the eyes as he told me of his concerns, and I shared his unease - for himself and for his family. Thomas lives in a place where everyone grows marijuana in their backyards, and when he gets a parking ticket that he feels is unfair, he`s right away down at the police station yelling at them about it. And he can get it reversed.

This may be the impression of a wide-eyed traveller, but I think human beings live much better lives in France than they do in the United States - or anywhere else for that matter.