Die gelbe Tapete

do those howling guitars make me

horny or is it the hormones

or your lickable smile

I was never into Manowar that much

but you must have noticed

my eyes, my lines

my secret is out in the open, râz-e

penhânam—luckily he isn’t here

for the infatuation evidence

luckily he will not read these poems

about how close I feel to you, how

much we share – village people

breaking with their roots, and I live

like a turtle too though not because

of Doom; I wonder how she made you

fall in love and kept you all those

years, I wonder why I stayed. Sadistic

Goatmessiah take the stage, I go

berzerk, I am alive, I’m puzzled as to why

you know the thought. Be grateful somewhere

there’s a someone who can stand you.

back to the riffs, back to the night, I

know I laugh and touch a tad too much

but it seems fine

my cheeks glow in the dark your hair finally flies

for a thousand-year-old you’re

damn fucking pretty with those gentle doe eyes

… and didn’t even get a eulogy, I knew for some of us it was too late to live. Me, I was too busy anyway writing love poems for someone I, well, loved. Everywhere I went it smelled of their hair, gingery and creamy. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you about. Fathers. It happened during the course of several weeks, it started with yours, then they died one by one, found usually by wives or workmates, never by us. We sat down together and renewed our old vow: We will become the boys our fathers always wanted, we will be better men than our fathers were.

I still know that someone whispered, But didn’t our fathers vow the same? It stuck in my head all night.We told ourselves we should go to their funerals. But in the same week I had to bury something else: the need to spend all future evenings with that person whom I loved and whose father was already dead, reading Adichie books to each other two chapters a night. Reading Purple Hibiscus. Admiring how the girl narrator talks about her abusive father. Love and violence in the same room.

That person whom I loved called their father an asshole person and didn’t even feel bad for saying men like that deserved to die. For them he was a reason not to be male, not to be masculine, not to be a man. I loved that person. They were not much taller than me and their hand fit perfectly in mine. And sometimes I felt like a boy with them but sometimes like a service.

We met again, our small group, all of us, united by the strange experience to have grown breasts and notice the difference. Someone dropped the words my body, my fault. The rest of us tossed our academic degrees and greatest achievements in a hat and someone said maybe we could buy some flowers with that. Tombstones, at least. We decided they should all read the same: ONE OF THOSE FATHERS.

Going home I thought of love, what are the chances, and felt giddy for no reason, probably because you can still dance atop all the filth. Anyway, I reserved crying exclusively for lovers or crushes. Never for family members or friends. It didn’t seem odd until you pointed it out, now I ask myself what should be wrong with that. Don’t you feel that disgust when thinking about the men in your family. Waves of nausea. You reply, ‚the one wrong thing would be resembling him‘, another added: ‚the one wrong thing would be resenting him‘. I guess I am guilty of both but didn’t drink myself to death like I had planned in those cases. So I had time for love. Made it. Lost it again. At one point there were graves, I remember that clearly, and I thought that my dead body would not be swept under the carpet so easily.

es ist noch kein Text erfunden, der allen

aus der Seele spricht, aber wie

wäre es damit

dass andere Saiten erlaubt sind

und meine Wut nicht

unverzeihlich ist, wenn auch erschöpfend

dass sie nicht von irgendwoher kommt

dass die Sterne in meinem Gesicht

immer mehr werden

dass ich den meisten Ärzt*innen

nicht vertrauen kann

wenn es nicht ernst genug ist, wird es

abgetan; wenn es zu ernst ist, werde ich

darauf reduziert, geframed als

hysterisch

sie kommen jenen, die mir etwas

absprechen, etwas

zuschreiben wollen, gelegen

diese chronischen, schlecht

erforschten Frauenkrankheiten—

und das mir, wo ich doch eigentlich

ein Junge — — dein Junge

nammoon naa la, boy

– … ma la raw

du machst mein Herz kalt

gestern hätte ich getötet, hätte

alle abgeschnitten, ich war

dabei, den Verstand

zu verlieren, oder mich; heute

versöhnst du mich mit der Welt

und als ich von der Angst

spreche, einmal im Monat jemand

anderes zu sein, antwortest du

ich habe diese Gewohnheit

was stimmt; du hast schon vieles

von mir erlebt und es nicht,

du hättest gehen können und doch,

du hast mich da, wo andere längst,

du bist mit mir, wo ich

das Aber zählt, die Hyäne und das Croissant

das Flugzeug nach Dakar, die verhakten Finger

der Brief an die Botschaft, die Kosenamen

der coup de foudre an der Ampel vor dem Hauptbahnhof

Speechless as the student discovers the hidden homestudio of Kesiah Mason, who has been responsible for all the hit songs of the past 35 years.

Kesiah snorts: „Who did you think could write such an extensive body of music full of repetition? Surely not 236 artists.“

„But what about Slash?“, the student asks incredulously.

„What about him?“, Kesiah laughs, the toothpick in the corner of her mouth twitching.

„Is he real?“

„Don’t be ridiculous“, Kesiah retorts.

The student looks sad, disillusioned.

„I wanted to believe that people are interesting. I wanted to believe in uniqueness. I wanted to believe in Slash. I wanted him to be a real artist.“

„You’ll believe it anyway“, Kesiah sighs, „you will forever attribute sensibility and genius to people who you fancy. I am just an old crone. Rat-faced witch that jumps between dimensions and writes pop songs.“

And Kesiah returns to work on a hammond organ arrangement with arthritic fingers.