The Divine Desperation of the Human Condition

 by Doron Braunshtein (also known as Apollo Braun)

 

The Divine desperation of the human condition

ספר שירה

Words

"When the child is born, the parent dies,"

This is what the monkey told me.

Then, the vagina man said:

"Love the one you fuck

And fuck the one you love."

Then, I touched you,

And I felt:

Blood is my poetry, blood is my poetry,

Blood is my poetry, blood is my poetry,

Blood is my poetry, blood is my poetry,

Blood…

Till you said:

"Love

Is

Not

Just

A

Word."

Hug the one you hate

 

 

Hug the one you hate.

 

To hate more,

Less,

To forgive,

To learn how,

To believe,

In him,

And in yourself.

 

Hug the one you hate

For the future,

And for us,

For life,

And for death.

 

Hug the one you hate

For yourself,

For yourself.

 

Hug,

Hug someone right now.

 

 

Words

 

 

"When the child is born, the parent dies,"

This is what the monkey told me.

Then, the vagina man said:

"Love the one you fuck

And fuck the one you love."

Then, I touched you,

And I felt:

Blood is my poetry, blood is my poetry,

Blood is my poetry, blood is my poetry,

Blood is my poetry, blood is my poetry,

Blood…

Till you said:

"Love

Is

Not

Just

A

Word."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mixed Couples

 

 

The simple things

Make me so complicated:

The sky above,

The ground,

Tons, tons of people

In a packed-up city,

And this loneliness,

This crazy, unbelievable stronger then the word ‘loneliness’

Loneliness,

In all of us, that can never leave.

 

The simple things,

Your dick Vs.

My vagina, when it’s separated,

Then, when it’s inside.

 

Do I believe in God, you ask?

Yes, I do. Very much and all the time

But, no, please don’t ask me how.

Believing is one thing. Explaining…

 

This is still Yom Kippur,

And it’s now finally the last hour.

I am in Tompkins Square Park,

Sitting and looking and thinking and writing.

In my eyes this is the East Village,

In my heart this New York is not my home.

My body,

My body and my soul:

The simple things,

When it’s separated,

Then, when it’s inside.

 

So many languages in this crazy

New York,

And no one language for all of us.

To hear the German, the Hebrew,

To feel the Arabic, the Yiddish.

To see the Asians, the blacks,

The yellows, the reds,

The blues, the greens,

The grays, the whites.

 

I am fat now

And then

I am thin,

I am smiling,

Separated so professionally from myself.

Then, inside,

I am dead.

 

In the first five days

In Auschwitz,

Primo Levi and I

Didn’t drank or ate a thing.

For five days, separating our

God from our soul.

Now I am alive in 2006

As Doron Braunshtein a.k.a

Apollo Braun.

For 25 hours I didn’t drank

Or ate a thing today

And I am not hungry

And not thirsty at all.

I want to continue, to continue, to continue

This fast as much as I can.

To push my own limits away.

 

When the police woman is

Saying to me:

"Excuse me, sir,

But the park is now closed,"

I know,

The simple things

Make me so

Complicated.

 

But sometimes,

Just sometimes,

I can still feel my own Primo Levi

Inside.