Berlin Walls, Hipsters & Haikus, Mike Marino [the false prince series TXT] 📗

Index

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter One     - Page 5

Chapter Two     - Page 10

Chapter Three   - Page 15

Chapter Four     - Page 22

Chapter Five      - Page 26

Chapter Six        - Page 31

Chapter Seven    - Page 36

Chapter Eight     - Page 39

Chapter Nine      - Page 44

Chapter Ten      -  Page  49

Chapter Eleven   - Page 55

Chapter Twelve  - Page 58

Chapter Thirteen - Page 62

Chapter Foudteen- Page 67

Chapter One - Getting Bombed in Berlin

 

Chapter One

The explosion shook the entire block fueling fear, panic and stress on the strasse. The impact was nearby. Too close for comfort  as it managed to blow Michael and Sibyll from the bed they shared, launched in a manner that would qualify them as human cannonballs in the carnival of Professor Sardonicus, if there were such a person, and if there were such a carnival .

 

Michael was in the arms of a hypnotic dreamy mist and fog of a deep slumber sleep in the second floor apartment while dreaming of chasing Jehovah Witnesses with a silver crucifix and a wooden stake! Only holy roller speak in tongues vampires ring neighborhood doorbells furiously in our dreams to preach the Watchtower gospel to we infidels. In the dream he managed to chase them down in a laundromat frequented by circus people of dubious nature who sat in rows shooting up drugs while watching midgets in the washing machines have sex during the spin cycle.

 

Sibyll too awakened startled and confused. “The blast came from downstairs! What the hell?”she screamed in broken English with a Kathleen Turner growl   

 

Downstairs, below the apartment was the Die Berliner Galerie für industrielle Punk-Kunst or The Berlin Gallery of Industrial Punk Art. The enclave Michael and Sibyll opened up to display a compost pile  of left wing art, artisans, activists, and anarchists that not only were the West Berlin police watching carefully, also had drawn the ire and unwanted attention of the plethora of post war neo nazi thugs who embraced the the old post Weimar Republic  fascism to such a degree, they’d send Groucho Marx off to Auschwitz thinking he was Karl Marx’s brother.

This was 1965….Berlin was divided into East and West, an unlikely pair of twin, more a Yin and Yang couple...Germany was divided  and cut up like a geopolitical pizza with anchovies and double cheese by the victorious Allied Powers. The US, France, Great Britain and those madcap fun loving vulgar vodka Volga loving Soviets. The spawn of Stalin. The Mother Fuckers of the Motherland. The Iron Men behind the Iron Curtain. “Yes, Wink, I’d like to choose door number one, please.” Drumroll, the curtain opens….”CONGRADULATIONS! You chose the Iron Curtain. You now are the proud owner of a cinder block apartment in Siberia at a work camp!  While there working on the railroad, you and your family will enjoy your new car!!! The all new Czar Nicholas Tolstoy Tesla! All compliments of the Soviet Secret Police!!”

 

Michael, an American was a writer who was as American as ribbed condoms. Originally from New York  he had met the German artist Sibyll in America during a gallery showing of her artworks that she augmented and layered with a sultry performance  of poetry and music in a one woman show that raised the eyebrows of the high brows of Park Avenue. Not surprising for a group of Wall Street weirdos who engaged in hunting down trophy wives when confronted with an art performance called “Menstruation: The Breakfast of Champions”

 

They met, they dated, they conquered each other. Two years later Michael had traded in his NYC  greenwich Village bagels and pizza passions for Berlin’s beer barrel polka and bratwurst, moving  to West Berlin to collaborate with Sibyll on a mutual dream. To open a gallery for artists of all stripes, one act plays, music geared to an anti-war sentiment, no nukes, drug legalization. feminism, human rights, civil rights, gay and lesbian rights, ban the bomb, burn the bra  .. all the usual fuel the would inflame the right wing to light a fuse...as they did this early 4 AM West Berlin morning.

 

The acrid smell of smoke permeated the apartment. Michael and Sibyll both made a mad dash to the stairwell to see what damage had been done to the gallery forgetting that both always slept in the nude and had forgotten to put on a stitch of clothing and would freak out any frauleins that had a phobia of all things public and pubic.

The art event that just opened two days ago and probably  set of a psychotic episode of skinhead emotions was the recently installed “Hot To Trotsky” event that featured the artwork of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera , and a three person one act musical play that depicted the love affair of Frida and Leon Trotsky while living in Diego’ house.

 

The gallery was not too badly damaged. The large window display facing the street was a shambles of glass and metal and the stage area was a dystopian portrait of torn curtains, and most notably was the damage to  the four 16 by 20 posters of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Leon Trotsky. Shrapnel had taken out Frida’s eye and knocked a tooth or two out, while Diego ended up missing his head. As for Leon Trotsky...he was appropriately castrated and now blind!

 

Fortunately the reading room and periodical store was unscathed. Chairman Mao’s row of Little Red Books with the sign above reading “Better Read than Dead!” was still standing. Karl Mark’s

“Manifesto” still manifested in one piece and the Joe Hill Labor Song Books stood strongly by the   side of old Woody Guthrie ‘78’s.

 

“Well, Sibyll. This is a mess. Second attack this year.”

 

Sibyll had a warm tear running down her cheek torrential  as the snow melt in Bavaria, but her smile would melt a glacier. “We continue. We don’t stop. We stop, the win. I’ll call the others and we can clean up and be ready to continue the Hot to Trotsky show.”

 

“We also need to think about hiring some muscle to skin these skinheads!” Michael interjected.

 

They both agreed and without another thought decided to go out for breakfast and then take photos and 8mm movies of the construction of the Berlin Wall. Concertina wire, concrete and armed guards. The other side of the old school Soviet lifestyle the young new leftists were determined to bring down...a new dawn if you will.

 

Sibyll ran upstairs grabbed her camera and raced back down to the Gallery. “Ready?” she asked.

 

Michael nodded and together they walked out into the now 5 AM morning heading out the back door for the small 24 hour cafe down the street before the police arrived to take down their report.

 

“We forgot one thing, Sibyll. Our clothes!”

 

She shrugged and hand in hand they walked down the alley naked as two strippers causing stares and gasps from the half awake winos and junkies who thought they were witness to an alien invasion of nudists from space.

 

No shoes, no shirt, no service...except in the art district of West Berlin!

Chapter Two - The Luftwaffle House of Pancakes

Chapter Two
We enjoyed our au natural  breakfast at the small dark alley cafe, owned and operated by a former Luftwaffe officer.  He opened up after the war and named it the Luftwaffle House that not only served Blitzkrieg Blintz and a stack of monster Panzer pancakes, but featured  an annual Hermann Goering look-a-like contest that attracted every weirdo from Bavaria to Berlin.

We returned to our apartment and got dressed, nudity at that time of the morning in that alley and at that cafe were perfectly acceptable. Even the cooks looked at us with a smirk...we only frequented early morning and late night "Nude" establishments. Now dressed we  went out to the hardware store and bought a ton of nails and a huge sheet of plywood to cover the opening where a window once stood. They don't find nudity humorous as we did.

After a few hours of cleaning  up the gallery wreckage we called the rest of the artists and our friends to fill them in on what happened and to seek their help in in the great gallery mop up operation  so we could continue the Frida event as planned. Fuck those Nazi’s...the show must go on...now more than ever!

They all agreed and arrived to do away with the debris and trash, sweep and mop, empty trash and get the place back into shape...leaving the Frida and other posters as they were. Shot full of shrapnel. We wanted to show resilience and determination in lieu of the attack. We would just call it "performance art"  by the right wing or "The Hell Heil of Hitler" while the gallery event was to now be "Hot To Trotsky - Phase Two!"

Then at night a meeting and wine & dope  party discussion of the gallery’s future. The politics of Berlin best discussed over smoked and injected drugs.

They all left  around 3 PM when we were done with the clean up, we’d already talked to the cops earlier and now time to hit the store down the street run by a blind Chinese man who inhaled paint fumes on a daily basis. We needed to stock up on a supply of beer and wine for the evening.

Sibyll an I were already sans clothing by the time they started arriving at 8 PM. They too removed every article of clothing as they entered. We always felt complete nudity led to complete honesty as you weren’t hiding behind a pair of Levis or a bra. Besides it was relaxing and a room full of 20 naked artists and anarchists was performance art of another order. Erections and large nipples speak louder than words, while the musk in the air emitted by all was better than incense at a Buddhist retreat.

One by one they stumbled in. First Pietro and his newly acquired girlfriend from the Soho District in London who claimed to be a different work of art every time she met you. “Tonight I am Venus De Milo,” she said with the conviction of an escaped  mental patient, to which I replied, “Of course, I didn’t recognize you at first with arms.”She swore she would remove them later. This I had to see.

In fact, later I said we could remove all