Berlin - Los Angeles

 
 
Quickened pace betrays my careful plans¹
and a shiver crawls up my spine. I ought to have gone back, retraced my steps.

Awake at 9:32
A warm bath
A light dress, it's summer
Out the door at 9:53
Down eight flights of stairs, the lift is broken
Out the door at 9:55

I ought to have gone back to the corner bakery and to another strawberry pie,
and miss the 10:05 train, the Brandenburg Gate, the night walk along the Spree.

And by now I'd be home, in our bed, sipping your lips and gliding down the surface of your naked body, tasting your skin, inebriated by the soft scent of your sex, the subdued song of your heartbeat.

But then the smoke, the melody, the overwhelming sense of possibility.

Even so, if only I had ordered my own drink,
if only I had steered the conversation back to the strum of the bass,
if only I had smiled and said goodnight instead of ever noticing the exact shade of light the rising sun makes against the ceiling of a 3rd floor in Friedrichstraβe,
if only,
I wouldn't be here now on this train station 50
kilometres north of Frankfurt, mentally writing to you.

But things, baby, things
have a perspective in Berlin and another in our hearts.
And everything is as easy as waiting
for the next train and finding the night in any
forgotten corner of a city.

I have a bowie knife and a pistol.

I will steal until the end of the world
just to find you. I will undoubtedly catch
the direct plane to L.A. and stand in the middle of the avenue
underneath the giant billboard of the movie theatre
where Providence was last shown.

I won't drink white wine until that day.

I'll eat your lips until they bleed.
I won't be arrested. I'll keep an extra bullet, concealed.

It will be at 5:45. It's your posterity.

Mine.

I'll untie me
from your cerebellum.^2
 
 
 
1in "By Night's Sweet Darkness" by JUDO ©2003
²in "Still" by Cordelia ©2004