KAFKAESQUE

KAFKAESQUE

(Stach, Vol.1)

 

 

Don’t kill me, I am a beetle

On my back

I can speak

Try to understand me

I have a bad father

And a good mother, mostly unavailable

Much to analyse

Letter to my father

Who is low class, upwardly mobile

Mother

Who is educated, melancholy Jewish

No time for me

But for business

Always business

Counting the pennies

Accounting

Accounting

Franz writing German in Prague

Dichter, Denker

Nothing is as it seems

Deep down 

A pragmatic mind adjusts

Kaiser, Henker

The Austrians lose the plot

Czech maids seek revenge

Fin de siècle fast approaching

Franz only a ten-year-old

Fireworks to come

Who fired the first shot

Franz or Frantisek

Jewish, German or Czech

All in one, one in all

Freischwimmer

To prove his father wrong

Liking water after all

Like an erotic envelope

Muses the Freudian biographer

Very German, Herr Stach

Latin and Greek grammar

Is good for your soul and education

Says Hegel but not Kafka

Who favours communicative competence

Parole not langue

Czech more affectionate than German

That cool if not cold language

Good for serving revenge

So analytical, so poetical

Good enough for his three sisters

Having to enact his plays

Under dictatorial direction

Playing father

A delight for the psychoanalyst’s

Oedipus Complex

The endless fear of failure and abandonment

The fear of drowning

The horrors of authority

Father, teacher, Kaiser

And yet

All are emperors without clothes

Empty shells

And yet

Feared without reason

Cowed by unfathomable unreason

Helplessly in pain

Like the beetle on its back

Finally proclaiming

We need to write books

That cause us great mental strain

And so he did

And so do I