[James Midgley]

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Berlin Grey

At the club’s entrance my companion gives a spiel
about freedom and body acceptance to the bouncer
who buys it, ushers us over the threshold

down damp steps on which one man is fellating another,
knelt as if in prayer, the receiver's eyes wide
but face deadpan, twunk body clad in dungarees.

In the antechamber we use stickers to hide
our phone cameras' narrowed eyes, strip off our day
time clothes and change into facsimiles of nudes.

An ecstatic cherry has been disemboweled to create
the red-lit chill-out zone where two mohawked tanktops
are carpenting each other into muscular crates.

One room over, the bloodied black iron lip
of a rusted cage swings open onto chains and bolts
that glimmer with cigarettes in slow collapse.

The walls piss nervously. Bass like a bluebottle.
We smear ourselves to the front of one DJ booth
and stand like cattle inside waiting pelts.

At the bar we order water but the river Lethe
has sweated over it -- he hands back too much change
and the water dizzies with the wingdust of moths.

The music clarifies like butter, the clangour
of a passing metro train that will not pass us by.
Our outlines in ascendance gather at the dungeon

ceiling and drip back down. I think of your balcony
facing a Prenzlauerberg street, the one you tried
to paint in the rain -- in the colour 'Berlin Grey'.


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