Amos Weisz

Non Juan

Section II possible ending


Where now? Who now? The hairline's getting thin
on plot before the phosphorescent screen
that sets its flicker off, and on the whim
of Durs Grünbein's 'Grey morning zone'
I'll entertain the self-afflaying sin
of jew enough to impugn the marauding hun
outside my window, half past ten in the morn-
in hoar of metal rivers rolling on

four storeys down, while unknown sites of con-
sciousness hold upright this godless quagmire land
of Berlin-Brandenburg, as all the con
artists of plebiscitism conjure or command —
I don't know why I'm working into song
this matter for which I don't give a tinker's fart,
but let the muse on the Spree's dying afflatus
sound once more after a long hiatus

SPREADING THE WORD OF GOLDEN TALLOW CANDLES
ROGERING THE SYLPH MINKOWSKIETTE
WHOSE BAR TO FILTH CONCEIVED AS JEWBOY HANDLES
FLAGRANTLY THE BLINDING SHEKHINETTE
WILL TURN THE SCUDS ADRIFT IN LEATHERN SANDALS
MOILING ON THE BICKERSTAFF ALL WET
WITH GREASE DIRECTED AT THE WINDOW'S AUREOLE
IN STIFF PRIAPIC RIGOR's LATENT FUMAROLE —

So ein Quatsch, nun sieht sich was man hat
wenn Muttersprache, einst mit Milch gesaugt
aus bundesdeutschen Brüsten dennoch glatt
um Engels Willen werden eingetauscht
für Bastard-Angelsächsisch, Alibi
der Unschuld in den hochgeratenen Breiten
wo Welsch Dragonier, Irisch Klee, thank God not me,
noch zuschauen dürfen, andere Ponies reiten

Yes, Heiner Müller — but let's carry on,
our hearts all humbled, or what passes for,
across the street, and up the road, to don
the gestures of a general before
another grocer's stand, and are we wrong
to choose five ripe tomatoes from the store?
The immigrant schoolgirl looks up to appraise
this number magic, then she drops her eyes.

but now there hammers in the solar plexus
word of my adversary's revolt:
the general of the faithless seeks a nexus,
seeing as our rhizome's tapped and sealed,
and in the name of free love, aliter sexus,
I'm quite prepared to have my hand revealed.
"Do you submit?" "I don't," he snaps in code;
"That's my man, welcome to our world."

And so the rhizome swallows up its friend
and foe alike, a microbe of the soul,
or human heart, or hope at journey's end,
when the last star melted in the bowl
of sky, the razor beckoned us to rend
our gorge, and send us voidward with a howl,
the Lord anointed us, we went to seed,
and dragged humanity down to meet our need.

But now we turn a corner of the mind
and street where hangs the newsprint of the day:
the aura of the printed German sign,
its corners, wedges, sumplike glitters, may,
to the initiate, exempt the grind
of reading, commonplace. "We're on our way"
asserts an article about Ozone's revenge all
over its exterminating angel's

natural habitus, the tower blocks
at night revealing through sporadic lights
left on in a kitchen window that now mocks
in signs beyond all words the fascist flights
of reason to the wearing of red socks
in daylight by its charges, all the frights
and shocks to which the visitor was subject
in the western city, all the abject

terror that accompanied the walk
across the bridge to Kreuzberg, all the sectors
the body turned machine suffered in torque
of head and limbs assaulted by the vectors
of freedom to uproot, disturb, destroy,
after coupling with the strange attractors
who sought their dignity in the uprising,
dispersed now, at a stroke, though not surprising.

And so the desultory high command
speaks through the diaphragm, its talking drum
to the proletariat now resounds with a bland
boiling down of the meat of the news in sum:
"All quiet on the western front";
this mission is too easy, lacks the rum
and black we seek to lace the impossible task:
joy with duty, is that too much to ask?

Indeed it is, and with a red alert
to shoo the vagrant thugs from off our roads,
and rubbing our bruised shoulder, ever hurt
by bombs of latent hatred that now goads
us to the task of entering the rhizome
to find and squash the partying, jobless toads
we persecute in names of filth and cleanness,
exulting in the dirt of sacred meanness,

we bumble on toward the Schliemann cafe,
named after the excavator of Troy,
where all is quiet and balanced, as evinced by
the obverse of Der Spiegel on the bar,
beside the flagrant fonthead of the taz,
so that we take the challenge with our wine
and probe the back room, scanning all the eyes
of the reprobates inside the back room, morning

hardly having passed, who's out for hash,
or dope, we'll see, we crumble cake
under a lighter flame onto the papers,
not the legible ones, and look around
for adepts to the sacred flame of weed,
and finding none, attentions turn to where
two chromium plated types in Timberlands
hold their meccano-jointed limbs in place,

"Sei standhaft, Alter," sagt der eine dann,
der andere schaut ihn an als ob vom Watz
gebissen wäre er, und sagt ihm dann,
Bist du etwa ein Orangutan
im Urwald der fürs Öl wird prospektiert?
Da sagt der andere, Nee, Mensch, ein Witz
bist du mit deiner Schnauze, ich will nur
die Fäulnis nisten aus dem Bambushaus.

Und aus dem Bambushaus wird ausgenistet
alles was dem Tagebuch nur frönt,
und Tagesspiegel, außer die verfrißtet-
e Sekunde hoch am Bahndamm, hinterm Glas
einer palästinernserfreundlichen Gesinnung,
als Jude doch kein Israeli,
daß die Postkarte des freundlichen Schergenaugs
mich treibe bis zum hinteren Kaukasus,

und darum, Freunde, wollen wir einen trinken,
auf daß der Jihad tröste seine Feinde,
und töten keinen Juden mehr, wir wissen
die Siedler sind etwas faschistisch
drauf, aber es hilft kein Tuten und Blasen,
die Stadt Jericho fällt nicht von allein,
und wenn die Schergen, die verruchten Sicherheits-
polizisten ihnen einen schmieren,

dann kommen sie auch von einwärts in ihr Heim
aus Feigenbäumen und den anderen Tand,
von dem sie einst verjagt wurden,
und mein typisches Gemäß
bleibt kein Auge trocken
Nein
Niemals