"sure i betray myself "
More Perihelion:
Bob Sward's Writer's Friendship Series
translated by translated from the German by David Perry
home sickness
i seethe forth from my abysses
into self-respecting misery
i flew above it all it seemed
to me to be merely superficial
i need to catch a glimpse of something
to knock me down smashed to pieces
i was crazy for the world without
& now I crave admission
into the fuckall face of fate
despite all I maintain
social market monarchy
now that socialism rules itself out here
my personal sectional authorized representatives
take it away, we say
the world flies by, see prenzlauerberg on parade
the experiment is too object of the experiment
betrayal
sure i betray myself as if don't i know
immanuelchurchtrashmoon
i shout a lot of shit
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that beyond sex & death
there must be something else
& if it's only sex or death
we must push through thisexperience
some swallow, others spit
i can tell you how you became undead
but you'll have to feed yourself
with all the pressure of a creeping conscience
& with the promised landing of free markets
we'd like to sell high, high as possible
make yourselves empresses
with all the pressure
of the promised
& as far away as possible
string-pulling! pushed or perhaps just peddled oddities, égal
to write through the target proceed at your own risk
our stygian advice hacks grill fad hags
we assist with the accent refuse emergencies & boil kohlrabi
destruction and so on is just disruption too
parodied institutions denied omens
the real commodity emotion beats on poetry
all my crimes count toward the correction of the actual
with the help of middlemen from the camp of colleagues
collective subconsciousness material spirits pull the wool
no cowardice excused-- disembody, heartundaunted
zip it up, zero in, call it a night bold, cold, give up & give it up
head in the air, stiffupperlip, teach us a lesson, punk
stand your ground like a grownup, all ground up; jump, legend
when the sun is short
& the days nights long at last
until nothing passes nowhere by
those who would be saved, go down
the papers are unsure
the numbers don't add up
and dawn's cool beer
was brewed overnight by the moon
David Perry was born 1969 in Saint Louis and currently lives in Shanghai. He is the author of one book of poems, Range Finder, (Adventures in Poetry, 2001) and two chapbooks: Knowledge Follows (Insurance, 2003) and New Years (Braincase, 2002). Recent poetry is forthcoming or has appeared in No: A Journal of the Arts, Pom2, and Sal Mimeo. He began reading the poems of Bert Papenfuss-Gorek after a summer in Berlin in 1995 and has attempted translations a number of times since.