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Chet gets me every time.
and I go back to dark, Berlin bars
where I used to sing his songs
for penniless melancholics
who drank beer and wine
and banged on tables,
and shook my hand.

I used to have dark hair then.
Dark thoughts dwelled in my hair.
I spoke in German, with an awful accent.
But my friends tolerated that.

I Drank too much coffee at night
and stayed out till six in the morning.
Wrote class papers about anarchism
and fell in and out of love every evening.

I was young and skinny
and skipped class every day.
I kept secrets.
Many.
They were about my life,
my life at night,
traveling to and from,
acting in films,
acting even when cameras were off,
fucking for the sake of it,
down in warehouses,
singing in streets
and bars
and anywhere.

Never had much of a voice.
But the owner thought
there was something very foreign,
yet very familiar in me.
Once, drunk, he let it slip,
that I reminded him of his childhood friend,
with that careless nostalgia in my eyes.

Those months are a blur.
I was alone,
I drew,
I wrote
and acted
and walked.
I was rarely sober.
And when I was,
I’d throw all my poems
and drawings into the trash.
Longing for someone who’d care.
No one to stop me.
Countless letters, postcards, stories
(written and disposed),
found their own resting place
in the hills of garbage,
somewhere, near Berlin.

It was always cold.
Except for May.
And may be, June.
But I left in July.
Went back home
to be the success I was raised to be.
And I was.
for years.
for everyone.

And since then, I’ve avoided Berlin.
For it’s marked me with a little more craziness
than you’d like to know.
One day, may be,
I’ll write it all again
and title it:
“The life of a baby blue, who never left”.

“baby blue” was what people from the bar would call me.