Sitting on a checkered blanket in Viktoria Park 

a girl from Naples wore a crown of nasty bitterness

half of a strawberry and a swig of god-awful Sekt– 

​

Go to the old airport. 

The one the bad ones used. 

The one the good ones turned into a playground. 

​

The rehabilitation of the dirt. 

Babies riding bikes, girls running. 

Rollerblading. 

          Rollerblading. 

​

They dance where their grandparents revolted. 

​

Ground that remembers– 

whose whispers has this dirt heard? 

Does it know the steel-toed boots of the past 

from the skates of today? 

​

The most famous club in the world was once a communist factory.

Music loud enough to pump my blood 

I danced for two days before it hit me: 

people died here.

It’s the nature of us, I guess. 

​

To forget. 

To remember. 

To forget, again. 

​

That seems like a warning. 

There are terrorists in the North, afterall: AUSLÄNDER RAUS 

​

I needed to see the girl from Naples, again– 

a fellow Ausländer, a collector of lost souls. 

I think I had a crush on her darkness. 

Her scrappy Italian accent– 

​

It made German musical. Unmöglich. A crime. 

Armed with grandmother’s broken tongue 

from her mouth to mine–she told me: 

she was going home. 

​

Ausländer raus. 

​

Berlin doesn’t let you remember. 

So you get stuck in the wrong without knowing why. 

​

And then you do drugs. 

And you go to bed at nine o’clock in the morning.

And you see actors set fires on stage, 

fuck shamelessly in front of hundreds: 

​

Children watching in the audience. 

​

The ultimate freedom. In a place that was a prison for forty years.

A city built for nine million 

buildings run from and forgotten 

rebuilt by Trummerfrauen in Grey. 

​

Berlin: Filled with what’s left. 

Rainbows and burnt books 

pencils and DDR Chocolate 

strawberries and god-awful Sekt. 

​

She looks beautiful at sunset. 

But her shadows stretch further than her light.