the B183 water crisis of 2009

after a while of not paying the water bills they cut off the water. the taps were dry and you couldn#t flush the loo. it lasted 4 days before me and moli (fuck you pernickety linguists), before me nd moli had taken it upon ourselves to organise an impromptu DnB soli party to cover the reconnection charge. the night was called "help us flush" and inaki drew us up an awesome flyer - i'll try and include a copy. X had rinsed the supermarket for 10 or so bottles of 5-finger discounted spirit so the bar could sell the strongest and worst tasting cocktails in the whole of Berlin-Mitte. no one knew how to consist a cocktail so we blended blindly. rum and orange juice with a shrug of brown sugar. apple and ouzo. vodka and milk. it was a dirty poison and had you crawling home. we gave them appropriate names: "sewage sunrise", "bitch piss" and "apocalypse - NOW!", respectively. so in-between; trying to borrow a PA, organise DJs, copy flyers and paste them all over the city, clean up the bar, buy in the beer, set up the lights, clear the yard, get some kind of wind in the sails, get balls rolling etc etc; people were still using the toilets. 50 people, 4 days, and at the best of times, 4 toilets that ran when there WAS water. do the math. so moli and i are running round like teenage anarchists on their first riot - not really knowing how this thing works, but knowing, with a humming bird franticity, that something has to be done right now - and we notice the crappers getting out of control. course we told people to go somewhere else (library, döner, park etc) but drunk punks tend to need this shit explained in disgustingly obvious detail. day dot wasn't so bad, but by the second day the shit was threatening to escape the bowl. by day 3 it had, and pyramids of shit were forming just above the rim of the seat. you could see that people were excavating the mound's summit with jets of high-pressure piss so that it was still possible to drop one last turd on top of the heap. by the morning of the 4th day the situation was truly remarkable. the mountains had risen in the night and stood well above the rim, their peaks breaking through a ceramic ring of clouds. i wondered how they got to be so big! no one could have SAT on it. had people been shitting into bags and then depositing the waste into/onto the toilet? and then it dawned on me. someone must have got up, each foot on opposites sides of the seat (to stand, head almost in the ceiling), squatted over the mound, and let another one rip. i was genuinely inspired. what a hero of depravity to have handled such a manoeuvre. i just couldn't believe it. and as i stood there pondering - hand on hip and shaking my head - less viscous turd was leaking through the gap between toilet and seat like skanky lava and brown vomit. like diseased alcholic lahars. like some terrible skat monster from the world's worst porn movie. i gagged. i gagged and staggered out of the cubicle. i dont know who eventually cleaned it all up. i dont like to think about it. meanwhile in the bog of the bar there's a similar problem, except we're doing water runs over to the pond in the park. we've got buckets and handwritten instruction ("DONT SHIT") pasted to the wall for the punters. thats our defence. anyway, these people are loving this stuff like "omg - look at that!" and thinking all the nude art is just fabulous. Toto is working the bar & vokü - dishing out Reis mit Scheiß and washing the dishes in more pond water (LOL). back and forth it goes: this salty mess. dumpstered veg that would kill you if it wasn't cooked, floating in a soupy sauce. fuck it. it's vegan, except for the sweat, and it's basically free. shut the fuck up. we're eating it too. and we're really gonna need those toilets the next few days. Robiin finally agreed to work the door on the condition he can style it his way. he's basing the entry price on the roll of a die - 1 to 6 - and generally being a dick coz he doesn't like Drum n Bass or the "yuppie-tanz-kacke" clientele. a guy in shiny shoes and a dull designer jacket starts up whining he doesnt want to pay €6 coz he landed a 6. Robiin checks the cuff - the cut - the clogs, and slowly leans over to spit on the floor, posing heavily with his eternal smoking prop. "dont piss yourself like a baby, micki" Robiin tell him, and the guy pays anyway - wait for it - with a 50! i dont think he even understood that to a poor bloke that seems fucking ironic. TWAT. we stabbed at people's arms and gave them lame tatoos when they were too drunk to resist the lure of our charming, stinking, priceless, smashed up punk cavern. i remember Toto kicking out guys (and i mean - kicking!) for being too yuppie; the definition of which largely entailed owning car keys or sniffing too much coke off the bar. sometimes we had to restrain him or else we would have been our own customers, serving no one but ourselves. we stood up for each other like a unity i've never felt before or since. that's how it was. tru solidarity, yo. B183 vs The World. and that was the best thing about it: we werent confined to the alternative pens of F'hain. we were smack-bang in die mitte. Mitte: square and square and feigning a pathetic push against the current of crawling investors. it wreaks of marketing around these parts and all i can see is pretentious art galleries, trendy bars, luxury flats, scaffolding and i <3 Berlin. foreign gold; forged in Berlin's heart; branded and minted. just like these landlord fucks will be in 10 years or so. naturally, i loved squatting Mitte. i loved being the wart on the celebrity's face; devaluing their screen-time-dollars.<br /><br />anyway, the party went well and we got our water back. it's a shame we had to pay the bill, but you know; you can't win em all. besides, we were the only houseprojekt in Berlin not paying a landlord and we ripped the leccy black for about €100 a month between the 50 of us. ANY QUESTIONS? i-don't-think-so.

letter to an ex (wish you were here)

i'm frying. i'm frying. i'm frying.

like i'm a raw egg getting good.

i wanna burn you like cancer rays;

growing in your guts

and crisping your soft, shaven shell till it's edible.

if you can stomach that then you know how i want you:

your skin in-between my teeth

and me, growing inside you like erotic tumours.

it's not healthy but it's ugly-romantic.

if it's not killing me, it's killing you.

Love letter from Gran Canaria, March 2011

death from above in a spanish island airport

my eyes crack and there aint no peace anymore. this sterile airport is full of filth. squinting old bats whose husbands don't know why they're there and are just going along with it like, "it was her idea". i figure they shrug alot and can't chose colours at IKEA either. babies scream apocalypticly, and bimbos, with nails and knockers as fake as their contracted marriages, tower over shriveled old men who trundle after them, breathlessly heaving suitcases twice their size. there's so many of them i feel the claustrophobia of a zombie movie moving in on me. so fucking many of them! dribbling drivel like "ooooh yeees. the resort is very exclusive, you know", and from others "well, the only problem is ... non of the locals speak any fucking english, do they?" all this filth around me like a menagerie of sin*. codgers, crones, cads and cunts. louts and lads, abusive dads. lovers elusive and all inclusive. business class losers, credit card users and company expenses pay for the high hotel fences. retirement home drones. the dragging droves of sagging bones. a plethora of the petted and pampered: pompous poodles and pugnose pups owned by prattling pumpkins and oompa-loompas. gymed-out fellas, casino dwellers, insurance sellers, and other rot. parents whose children fiff and faff. conservative families who think theyre getting away from the riff-raff. i see a hundred Hyacinth Buckets. kick it you fuckers! i can't be the only one here who wants to curl up and die! actually there's a lot that are on their way for one reason or another and i spot a few drab heliophobic faced motherfuckers who look like they already have. died, that is. died and just continued moving with a few surviving brain stem reflexes or something. and the whole time, there's more of them turning up. like they've made the journey here just to make my morning hell as if sleeping here wasn't bad enough. whole armies of these leatherfaced turtles in frothed up furs about as glamorous as tuesday night karaoke, persistently swinging through the damn doors. batches of em; bastard-bitches, deployed by private busses from their smug-hole hotels, pushing their fat asses into the airport and filing themselves in order of who's the biggest twirp who thinks they will reach their destination faster by being 1st in line for checking in. you stupid fucks. anyway, let it be known that there is no hope for the human race. whatever. fuck em. so moli and i haul ourselves some breaky from the bins and within 5 minutes have a feast of apples, peaches, pears n 'nanas, juice, doughnuts, pop, biscuits, crisps & profiteroles (i shit ye not), sandwiches, a pair of shoes (unfortunately 1 size too small), towels, a rucksack and ...well, a whole plenty of stuff that i threw away anyway when i later found more coca cola than jesus could carry in his gut and about 3 meals worth of fried shit at burger king. hell yeah. it was mostly still warm-n-all so i tanked up on junk like a greedy monarch and almost puked on take off. in fact a little bit did come up, but i swallowed it back down again like a good boy. not that it would have mattered if i hadn't - it was just out of instinct. i mean, after all the whining i've just done about my fellow passengers, i'm hardly gonna give a fuck about a little vom' slipping down the side of my cheek now am i? bon voyage (or whatever they say in whatever language they speak in whatever country we're leaving) 

*bear with me a moment, i'm about to go into a rhyming onslaught. in fact, not only does it rhyme, but also includes mass quantities of ... alliteration!

one day my talent will be recognised

I AM AN ARTIST! TAKE ME SERIOUSLY! THE DECISIONS I MAKE ARE DEEPER THAN OTHER PEOPLES COZ IM AN ARTIST! LOVE ME! LOVE ME! I DESERVE TO EARN A LIVING FOR BEING ABOUT AS CREATIVE AS ARRANGING STATIONERY OR CHILDREN'S SNOT SCULPTURES! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT MY WORK! IT SPEAKS FOR ME AND I SPEAK FOR IT! I AM A GENIUS! LOVE ME! I AM AN ARTIST! TAKE ME SERIOUSLY!

recycled paper

(sorry joe - i robbed the opening line off you, but you know, you're not famous yet, and probably never will be, so i guess i don't have to pay you royalties or anything...)

into you i pour all of my best lies.
my self, my sin, my soul.
writing and wronging
and wasting away, like,
oooh, trash can, you are my best friend
and only confidant!

the ink sticks and stains.
the page sips and drains.
it's engraved in paper:
a resignation to be perpetually burnt
in fire, and drowned in ink.

then i read it in the tabloids,
and i wipe my ass with it,
and i inhale it.

i'm smoking a fag and i'm fucking breathing:
BLEACH.

on a roll in the loo,
when i'm mopping the floor,
in a perfectly white, pristine envelope,
like resurrected virginity,
fresh with the fragrance of Daz.

PS. i'm posting the big businesses of bleach letters coz they like my type of character. the type that drowns themselves in reams and reams.

translated from english

words,
worms,
wriggling rings,
working inches below the surface,
in sublime dirt,
murky & vague,
recycling the world's compost.
and above we play guessing games;
eye-spy and hangman;
trying in vain to describe our seemingly acute dreams,
until we each realise it's safer to slur than pronounce,
as it's safer to slide than to stick.

writing in the dark...

everything was ok. it always was: coz you don't have to sweat the small stuff. and by the way, it's all small stuff. heavy lines, hugging me like MOTHER. godamn i'm so stoned. writing in the dark, i can hear tribal music in the waves. i can literally hear it, singing. and the lights in the sky spell geometric patterns. dodecahedrons and spirals. characters and figures. they've got numbers, see, like dot-to-dot galaxies. one-two, buckle my shoe. three-four, knock at the door ... (dot-dot-dot) . dotty like my grandmother's living ghost, crazy with alzheimers. smash your castle before the tide comes in. or else nuke the moon in half. that's possible too. writing in the dark? don't even try. goodnight, sandman.

 - A cave on an unnamed beach on Gran Canary, March 2011

i wrote a whole other blog for the trip to Gran Canary, which you can find below. Me and M0 knew it was going to get seriously cold again in Berlin and we wanted to get away and go somewhere warm. We figured with the shit-show in Egypt, by which we mean the revolution, flights would really cheap, but that wasn't even the case. The cheapest warmest place we could find was Gran Canary, so that's where we went to live out the cold month of February.

https://atobtoa.blogspot.com/