notes from the other side, part 1

east berlin, gdr, 1968

he might have been a sailor

or a machinist

from the roughness of his hands

or a printer like the hundreds of hands

at the karl marx printing factory

but actually

he was a writer

a poet twisting in a straightjacket

unable to break free

"this is the shit"

he'd say

of the reality

of socialist realism

mind you

he was the true revolutionary

caught between the passion

and the facts of life

past the age of forty and still advocating

for the great transformation

even my comrade with his superior analytical precision

and pointing index finger

couldn't apply the dogma

to the reality

the room in the apartment

was filled with smoke

and a few expatriates

everyone was squirming

the musty indian rug was worn

yet warm to the touch

the lighting dull

a touch of cognac or vodka

nothing but a stale taste to hide pain

the writer kept repeating

"where can i go where it isn't like this"

i thought

maybe vietnam

i never found out

what happened to him

whether he survived the purges

and prisons

or got his words published somewhere

the cobblestones of east berlin

were laid out in a grid not a garden

without space to grow

intransigence locked in

between paranoid concrete walls

and raw power

from the end of a rifle

to a cannon mount

on a tank turret

taking aim

at the poets

--- e b bortz