Bert(h)oldt Brecht

            Essen Sie etwas, wenn Sie Hunger haben.
So you went to Berlin
the hotbed of creativity
got between the sheets without blushing
Artists thick as thieves
eating and drinking till they starved
smoking in the cafes; so gorgeous
you gorged
yourself on acquaintance
on the socialist model
under a splendid waxing moon
of imminent notoriety
suspended and gleaming like a spangled party favor
and you
had such long arms

You changed the spelling of your name
Then actresses had
your children and your suicides
for you. They saw to the details
they filed your mail
did they light your cigar, did they
open routinely to you? mind first, then legs, a natural
process (flowers disclosing themselves to the sun)
gave you sex and divorces while
you exposed and fondled the underbelly of the world
theorized a theatre of dis-illusion
naked machinations and ingenuous craft
a new social order and
You were a communist
You were a smoker
a man, uncompromising in, and uncompromised by,
your convictions,
a man, you were
appetite, you would be
sated. a prime example
of successful networking
of propitious numerology. I, too,
would change things, the order of the world, my own
obscurity, growing by increments as we speak. Ich habe Hunger, aber
ich habe nichts zu essen. I would change my name
by more than two letters, my place in the food chain,
if my name or my place were negotiable; maybe
I’d sleep with a genius if I couldn’t be one,
if they wouldn’t let me, if they bound my arms
with fables and theory
in this new Berlin
in these cafes
unlit by this flaccid shell of a moon. Wenn es kein ziel zu greifen
gibt nutzt auch der arm nicht. Mans Arme werden kurze,
wenn es nichts zu greifen gibt.
One’s arms grow short
when there is nothing to reach for.

Karen Wurl