She works everyday from 9 to 3
Cleaning what came before so as not to disgust the new disgusting clients
The whorehouse is not the best in Berlin, but it pays her rent
She washes the sheets, mops the floors, and boils hot water for the older whores
Like a dog hit by a car, she crawls home
Her husband opens the door and says, how was your day
With confidence she replies, humanity is a gloriously failed experiment
The husband’s eyes turn to broken glass and he thinks, well, at least she knows how to stretch a mark
I’m reading all of Brecht’s 2,500 poems
Jan asked me, how’s it going
I said, Brecht’s coming out my ass
She advised, eat some prunes
So here I sit, eating plums (Brecht’s favorite) while writing an explosive poem about a genius who works in a whorehouse
I wonder if Brecht would approve of my stealing his name
I think so
Everybody steals from Brecht … Kurt Vonnegut, Frank Sinatra, Barack Obama
All the best people
tin hats 
Hi Duke,
Why are you doing this? I don’t get it. Who is this Brecht person? But, whatever may come, I’ll be right there with you, feeding you apple sauce and worm bits. Tucking you into bed at night. Transcribing your tapes about overthrowing the government. Hammering down the shadows. Well done. Thanks. Duke (I’m going to start leaving comments to myself. Maybe it will make me a better person. Give me a new POV.)
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You’re right – “failed experiment” was definitely stolen. Leaving comments to myself is something I bet Brecht would approve of although I haven’t yet caught up with you.
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The juxtaposition of sitting ‘eating plums’ and ‘writing an explosive poem’ made me chuckle. May I suggest mixing some chia seed with fruit juice in the morning, it may take some of the effluvia ‘bang’ out of the prose but has enough fiber to densify the meaning.
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It’s been four days since I posted this poem and I’m still not Bertolt Brecht. There’s a bag of cement in my body. The river cries fish during the day and garbage at night. There’s a woman telling me personal stories about the dead. How they run and fall. She seems dead as if she is translating for the others. The language is foreign to the ears of the living. It sounds like background noise in a room filled with dental patients. I think I’ll write a poem about rivers, fish, the language of the dead, and the translators of the dead language who are always present. It will be an exercise in futility. Much like the observers of the Ukraine war and they say, look, look, the people run, they hide, they anxiously abide the rest of us by the soaked second of everyday. Thank you. Bertolt Brecht.
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“The banks are where the money is.”
Pounded at work, stupid round and round.
I’m told my curmudgeonly ways are holding me back from advancement at the company.
And they think I give a fuck? Please, do me a favor, fire me.
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A dangerous man is a truthful man. And I’m happy to stipulate that truth is relative, your honor. But in this instance, I think that all of us can cheer the defendant’s statement and reliably understand the truth in what he says. (This is text cut from To Kill a Mockingbird. The Duke Miller version.)
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