A Valentine from Berlin

A Valentine from Berlin

What a funny valentine
Hiding my hide behind
A bush, my anti-greying
And your continued greying

Berlin - we’ll sort it out in -
Berlin - leave your jackboots at home.
Berlin - don’t fixate - it’s Tolstoyan Times

Tomorrow we’ll crawl over the carcass of the Berlin wall.
(Ignore the angry flies and squirming maggots.
They are just child cells of unborn and unforgiven Nazis.)
We may even have our own brief unification
As we stare in awe at what the incarcerated spirit can achieve.
Just ask the Egyptians as they end their own apartheid.

(Lately though your goosestep has outpaced me.
When I fall into my own rhythm you yank my shackles.
Where is my liberty?)

Do you remember the idealistic days of twenty-five years ago?
Our college was never that of a sepia - tinted Brideshead.
No gold, misty snaps of a supine summer for us.
Yet I can still recall how your physical presence scythed a
sickle through my drug - armoured aura.
Like the young blood you were
you jostled into my burnt, barricaded brain.
We became conjoined at the waist,
making love between chapters of Das Kapital.
Sang the Internationale in unison in the shower.

Now - are we to stay alienated in our outdated map of imperialism?
You are a tall wire to swing to. But you were my flagship.
Where are the pre-war boundaries? Is there a fence where I end?
Is my head now your territory?
You seem to forget me these days.
I feel like Trotsky. Obliterated. Blackout.

But I am so sick of this gender warfare.
Lets meet before the Earth turns electric?
Are we still in love ?- we were always so eclectic .
We used to be able to take any song,
any poem, any book and agree.
So I am going to sue for peace.

My siren screams out.
We must get our belongings packed.
We are only allowed the basics I believe,
Leave behind your tear - blitzed manifesto.
It was always too sulphuric.

Evolutions, revolutions, resolutions.
We whirl, nauseous round this
germ-warfare groove.
A cyclical path without glory.
You have a chance to grab me before I
get lost amongst the ants scattering
as the anthrax finally descends.

Oh - let’s make our last stand together
Outside our own bunker
before the world sinks scarred like
a shriven, bloodless heart.

JM 2011