Digital Totalitarianism

 Join the manifest:
 
In the 80ies me and my family were observed and under pressure of the East-German secret service STASI. All my American and British friends were shocked of what these non-democratic tool of opression did to us during the Cold War. Now, long time after the Cold War has ended, the secret services of the USA and the UK start to observe us all without any democtratic legality and control. Is it really the year of 2013, dear friends?! If the Anglo-American secret services (supported by Canada, New Sealand and Australia) and their illegal disctruction of all our data privacy become international then also our demand for democratic control of those dubious institutions must become international ...

No clandestine mass electronic surveillance data mining! Internet control must compeletly be controlled by democratic institutions like parliaments and official courts etc.! Save the internet, save the self-determination, save the freedom of each individuum!

Roberto Yanez in Berlin ...

On Friday, Nov 1st, the German-Chilean poet and painter Roberto Yanez from Santiago de Chile visited our literary salon at Kollwitzplatz in Berlin. He read some new poems on the occassion of launching his first German poetry book "Frühlingsregen" (Insel Verlag/Suhrkamp 2013) which is illustrated by his own paintings. (He also launched an exhibition of his pictures later in Berlin.) The special thing about Roberto: He is the grandson of Margot an Erich Honecker, last heads of state of the GDR until the time of the fall of the wall in 1989. Of course Roberto is tightly related to his grandparents until today but in a personal not in a political way. (Erich Honecker died in Chile in 1993, Margot is still alive an in a constant contact with him.) Roberto abruptly left Berlin with his family and went to Chile for good when he was 15 years old.

  Now it was for the first time that he came back to Germany and his hometown Berlin. As a poet who was pursued by the socialist secret service of the GDR (Stasi) at this time it was a pleasure for me now, after 23 years, to invite Roberto, who became a poet too in the meantime, for a reading to our salon ... (HERE a link to a song i wrote about his grandfather in 1989...)

And THIS is his song about his personal reunion with Berlin ...

Small town boy (very Berlin version)

This can happen to you only in the streets of Berlin ...

time - the animated film (by xkcd)

JONI MITCHELL is a POETRY GODESS

Watch her story here ...

and listen:

Heavy little!

                                                                     ...don't miss that!

Poetry on stairs

During the Brasilian FLUPP literature festival some young people of the favela Prazeres in St. Teresa/Rio de Janeiro wrote poems on their public staircases - amongst them also my poem "festival of seconds (sekundenfest)". Thank you guys for this amazing idea! Look ...

My recommendation: Visit fascinating Rio de Janeiro and look for this!

JOHNNY CASH - IN GERMAN LANGUAGE!

No joke. Its him.

Berlin Mauerpark (wall park - open air poem)

when I was a child there was no grass
instead of birches watch towers stood under gray clouds
and where now the multilingual calls of the ballplayers fly through the air
once gunmen with shepherd dogs patrolled in the freshly raked sand
of the death zone
 
now we casually lay on the hillside meadows on sunday in the middle of town
and yell to the pop hits of the karaoke singers on the open-air stage
jugglers jazz bands and drink retailers cavort among us
between bicycle riders, family picnics and dragon fighters
 
maybe you want a plaster head of karl marx (unfortunately without nose)
we also offer hitler's razor and stalin's fur hat at low supply
says the paris born congolese to the peruvian student of chinese descent
and his polish girlfriend (who just recently moved to berlin)
 
the baby in the sling worn by his haggling father
does not know where the mauerpark has its name from
(perhaps from the friendly stadium wall covered with colorful graffitis?)
 
in former times i always shunned berlin this bleeding sore of hatred
but now i live with pleasure on this unprecedented flea market of dancing relics
full of incoming dreamers with big hearts and little money

a babylonian triumphal procession of the curious covers the chattering scars
of the gigantic patchwork carpet of my story
called berlin