Berlin’s blueprints were drawn up with a pogostick
Measured in the highs and lows and
Grandmaster plans of allies and enemies.
You see Berlin on the pogostick
Bouncing over jagged concrete memories
of the torn down wall and
Touching down in the basement art shows
where gravity
And creativity
And bizarre performance pieces
And the freedom to do so
Suck you in.
Catching air with all the potential energy of the spring
The pogostick lets you fly by Mitte’s
parks lined with Spatie stores
public drinking at twilight
And sticking it to the clubs, bouncers and covers
by making night
the new hotspot.
It catapults you over P-patches sprouting
around Tempelhof’s abandoned airport runway
windsurfed on skateboards
Sunbathed by nudists
Replacing the Nazis, replaced by the Soviets, unhanded
by the Americans.
Handlebars grasped but unanchored to the past
Modern wings are forged in capitalism’s expanse
Of rising rents and crowding space
to reach a bird’s eye view in the developer’s cranes
over politicians in the Bundestag
Electing the capital’s motto
“Poor, but Sexy.”
Heart lurching in your throat for
Pink triangles burned
And ashes scattered in the grainy film
Of twisting tongues, taboo and fascism
now laid to rest
At the gates of Tiergarten park
Only a hop, skip, and jump away
From the block of an East-West memorabilia mash up
And the cement block faux coffins
Tilting to the trend of turning a profit
on companies complicit in
Holocaust
memorialization.
Footpegs like public transit and museum fare
give you a degree of separation between
your soles
and lost souls
marked by brass stars inlaid in the footpath
Through the old Jewish quarter
And office cabinets filled with Stasi files on every Berliner,
Every suspect
Every victim
Every visitor
Dotting an ongoing but relentless
Pace between memory and past.
Jumping between then and now
East and West
Ups and downs.
CHID major making little things a big deal.
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