Tonight instead of recording a new episode of Me vs. The Radio I went out to the Paper Heart Gallery to perform some poetry.
Below is the first piece I read... Its based on a true story of an attempt to escape from East Berlin while the Berlin Wall was still standing.
It might have been a tuesday night
When a plot was hatched by candle light
"There's a way out of the city!" he said
"We'll get out alive or be shot dead"
His occupation was going up and down
Repairing elevators all around
It gave him acess to the roof
Which other East Berliners could not do...
So one day his family came to work
The hid in the closet keeping quiet
He worked all day nerves of steel
Pretending he wasn't planning on leaving
Finally after night arrived
To the roof with his son and wife
He threw a cable from east to west
It stretched taut above their heads
Above the guards with guns
Ready to shoo anyone escaping East Berlin
Wtih the rope tight harness ready
His wife started across holding steady
She inched over, hand over hand
While their son didn't understand.
Then the ten year old boy had to go
But wait hd didn't want to go
He didn't want to leave his friends
He didn't want to leave their home...
And so the father panicked
"What can I do?"
"You must go across
And go across soon!"
He tried to think of a little white lie
He thought and he thought and he thought of a bribe
If you go across tonight
Then I promise to buy you a bike
It will be fast and shiny and new
The boy paused and asked...
"Can it be blue?"
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