Borrow a Song Lyric Companion

Not to overstep or anything, but figured the new thread needed to have its own counterpart so that it could be kept clear of extraneous remarks and/or commentary that might detract from the actual poetry.

And, naturally, there was an ulterior motive behind it all hehehe

Champagne said:

The Magic Of A Moment
I marvelled as I beheld
that moment in a hurricane....

Click to expand...

I really got into this. I remember sitting in my apartment, working on something for a roleplaying campagin I was running around graduate classes and theater rehearsals. I had the television on, but it was really low because I was waiting on something that didn't start for a short while, and my roommate was talking with his fiancee while taking a break from his med school homework, when something caught my eye.

I remember squinting past the two of them and motioning for them to turn up the television while asking, "Is that guy dancing on the Berlin Wall?"

Remec said:

And, naturally, there was an ulterior motive behind it all hehehe



I really got into this. I remember sitting in my apartment, working on something for a roleplaying campagin I was running around graduate classes and theater rehearsals. I had the television on, but it was really low because I was waiting on something that didn't start for a short while, and my roommate was talking with his fiancee while taking a break from his med school homework, when something caught my eye.

I remember squinting past the two of them and motioning for them to turn up the television while asking, "Is that guy dancing on the Berlin Wall?"

Click to expand...

LOL I was about to reply to your first post when I clicked and refreshed and saw this comment. Thank you. I was astounded when I saw the party start watching SKY News on tv. It amazed me then to see the tentative approach of the East Berlin residents across no-man's land and the miracle that allowed them to reach for the hands of the westerners extended in help. I was in Germany fighting the Cold War and had actually just came off of a 3-day Starfighter exercise in which all Canadian military personnel simulated war operations and mobilized into shelters and practiced air ops in a chemical or fallout environment. We had no communication with the rest of the world outside of military communications with HQ and other bases. So this occasion carried a very powerful punch.

Canada closed its bases in Germany in 1993, I was fortunate to have served there at all. It was an excellent posting and a fantastic series of events that I was privileged to see.

Living in Berlin, I can say for many East Germans, they do wonder now they are part of the so called free west, what the big deal is. Not that they want the old GDR back but they do point out there is little change to their lives. Their lives are controled by work, if they can get a job, if not, they are condemned for not having a job that isn't there. They have a government that doesn't listen and are part of the west which out does the GDR Stasi in spying on them. There are people who search rubbish bins for bottles with deposits they can return to the shops for a few cents. It's very sobering to listen to disillusioned people who believed in the western dream of freedom, only to find freedom doesn't really exist in the west, it is all propaganda. Of course, there are winners who will claim different but there are more losers than winners. Of course, freedom can never really exist except in political platitudes of slimey corrupt politicians.

This was a poem I wrote after buying one of the losers a drink and a cigarette in a bar. Sooner or later they will all die off and there will be no witnesses embarrassing western politicans by pointing out, they are just as bad as the GDR politicians in their own way.

misanthropy

a bar, a drunk
an ear and too much time
he was born across the divide
a wall separating two lies
we are all capitalists now
and still no holiday in Spain
his life is a cigarette
shortening with every breath

economy and that last drag
will burn his fingers
grinding his bitterness
into the ashtray, disappointment
acquired like bad breath, pollutes
his conversation, drink, you float
or drown but he simply
flounders, hanging onto any fool
that offers themselves
as flotsam

there are not enough mirrors
in this place, no reflection
not enough of the same face
staring back, no focus
just a blurring of multiples
illusions and mooning faces
a shaggy dog story, brewed up
from moral subtractions, smoke
a fog that envelopes him
like a flame

How very true, bb. I know that so many grand visions were drawn when the wall was torn down. It was almost metaphorical instead of a reality because all it changed in many lives is the flag flown from their government installations. Sure they now had access to plenty, but there wasn't enough money to buy what they needed, never mind what they wanted. Yes, a wind of change, but now to get the world to bend in that wind is still a challenge.