the time has come soon forgotten

He didn't choose this world, this catatonic city floating across divergent waters, walled in by a forested hinterland made smooth by northern winds. It was chosen for him. He arrived under an impulse he could hardly call his own. Awoken one rainy night in the city of the risen dead, enamoured with its own ruinous legacy, transfixed by the mischievous spirit of history, reenacting its memories like some washed-up vaudevillian inextricably bound to one role & playing it until the final scene. Streets deserted beneath the charged air that follows a hush. White buildings, iron rails & stone facades. Awoken & soon pacing beneath the tracks over Schönhauser Allee, settling into an anonymous destiny, forgotten in a world that would sooner be buried in ash than forget its past. Unable to fully remember the first days here when he was drunk, wandering around the main train station, escalators bridging each level, the lights flooding across the floors. Rising & descending into damned netherworlds. There was a show set up for him in Hamburg by the tranny ex-girlfriend of a German keyboardist he met in Seattle at a Melvins concert. That night arriving at a warehouse emptied of a crowd, only a man & woman in the corner passed out together, a short kid with patches of bleached hair stacking up cases of empty beer bottles onto a grocery cart, a projection screen hanging from a wall with a home video taken during a bright afternoon of a boy beating a dog with a stick. His laughter & the dog's whimpers faintly heard through the wind flapping against the microphone. He set his guitar in the dirt & leaned against a column & listened to the wings in the rafters & saw feathers sifting across the blue screen before the rain began drumming on the roof.