• About

Karen Mary Berr – Poetry & Video

Karen Mary Berr – Poetry & Video

Monthly Archives: November 2013

Oppositions

27 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by Karen Mary Berr in Poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Close your eyes, it is finished
we have died, you and I.
Your name, April, is gone
and October broke open,
unopposed.
We have no mouths, no cries,
the venom lost its course.
The abyss says nothing, just blinks,
curved and warm like a shawl of ink.
In pure darkness,
it is your voice I remember most,
devouring the sheets,
where the pain now lies,
impotent.
Memory downstairs is calling,
keys shine in every lock,
like knives.
There’s not one sin missing.
Nothing abstract nor pale,
nothing we wouldn’t recognize.
Except, your fist is empty of fury,
and my kiss on your solid neck
persits.
You are not another,
only the man I always loved.
I am the same naked fool
left with a crimson seed.
And there’s no more clinics
for blossoms,
no more pills for absence,
only the sound of us dancing
into a razed distance.
Each note is new yet familiar,
each wave a violent cause of joy,
and even if all seasons are gone,
we know,
as we knew thirst,
I won’t cure myself of April,
and you’ll keep craving for October
– One entirely made of flesh,
the other invisible like music.

Nausicaa

15 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by Karen Mary Berr in Poetry

≈ Leave a comment

(after Homer)

I came at last to the banks of the Sava
where your words weld to silvery water
to throw the fragments of your last letter
this livid, insipid, meaningless gray juice.
“How are you?” you write “I think of you
– sometimes.
It’s really like 300 years ago”. Scattered
like wild berries, every cell of my heart
trembled with a sudden appetite to see
in your green elusive eyes, something
– radiant.
As I undressed in the cold air of the city
my whole body rising from the Nothing
Pole, I asked to the water to wash off
the dirt of my clothes, your sticky gray
– neutrality.
The river spitted out my dress spotless
and I spread it neatly along the shore
where its lapping leave all pebbles clean
waiting there for your numbness to dry
– in the sun.
And when the heat tightly gripped my neck
I took off gently my violet scars
played an invisible game, danced alone
to its fictive rythm, drunk in the mauve
– light.
At night, it had happened. I found the end
of my journey and stood, alive, in the river
of light, there, among the stars of Zagreb
Who wouldve known the sky would get that
– cold ?

Listen here, Read by RM:

Under 16

14 Thursday Nov 2013

Posted by Karen Mary Berr in Poetry

≈ Leave a comment

We are not lovers, we have monsters’ hearts
our skins barely keep our lust inside.
We don’t need grace nor tenderness
and know things about bodies we shouldn’t know.
We display every part on screens, cameras,
phones, except our faces.
The tear in the eye is no longer needed.

Pictures below our waist signify everything.
In your blue-lit rooms, computers burn
as only parts of us burn
after six days of fucking without sleep.
At noon, icy stars have all sunk
in Absolut, flowers on balconies withered,
and spring lies in the pale glove on the floor.

We come and drink, and come,
and forget our way back to the world.
Hour by hour all is genitalia in frames.
We do it for you. You are insatiable.
Dogs lick our hands, birds drink in
the dirty bowls in the sink, they never sing
and we can’t stop.
No love is left.
Life is just one acid vase of cum.
We don’t speak about desire.
We film excitement. We do it for you.

Sometimes, we open a window to get some fresh air,
but you start the whole process all over again
and make us go round and round
like rats on wheels. There’s no exit.
Your hands are firm.
Our hearts never tremble.
At the idea of an empty sky, we never cry.
Instead we rim each other for dessert.
You see, you taught us god is not bread
but we are still extremely hungry.

What a pity.
Imagine if we’d never missed a meal,
if we’d never slept in the streets,
if we’d never thought more than twice of suicide.
In short, if we were children to all of you,
instead of being an anomaly,
or an industry.
We wouldn’t keep you company.

Eastern Peach

13 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by Karen Mary Berr in Poetry

≈ Leave a comment

after “The Price of Sex”

Was I ever a woman ?
Have I ever lived by my own light ?
Whose heart was it, this tulip
out of its cup of blood,
cheated by its own thirst ?

There is a star, to the southeast,
so glorious it makes me faint.
It is rosy and pulsing
like an image of my young body.
Unlike me, it disquiets the dark.

I’ve been there once, under its wink,
with an age and a name,
but no memories, except of parting.
No one told me what changed my country
into a dead zone. Money was gone,
streets unrecognizable,
cafés full of life, closed.

Only the weather felt like being kissed,
and the morning looked like a shining fruit
when hope took me, then sold me,
it’s a truth of youth.
Hope. Nothing else,
transplanted me.

I remember the first room,
my legs stretched out, uprooted,
men used to come unconcerned.
Years shed their skins like snakes
exposing the same cold shame.
For whom should I paint my lips red now ?
Now I’m blacker than night
daughters of Jerusalem,
too dark for you all.

Tell the boys, tell them,
I wish one of them was the first,
to have someone to think of,
or the second, to die of desire,
but not the third, who is just there,
and can’t hurt anymore
because what difference does it make ?

Tell them that when birds
rise and fly in the clear air
I want to kiss the ground.
I wish only a different sky
could remember me.
Days, hours, pass
without news from life.
Nothing.
Sex, work.
Sex, work.

Just pictures of my youth
fading on the hard earth
and washed by the rain.

Static Bird

08 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by Karen Mary Berr in Poetry

≈ Leave a comment

There are somber days
all twisted
like magnetic tapes,
mornings he barely recalls
his face and name.
There are violet dawns
bruising like promises
no one could ever keep.
Nights, he spends in bars, trying
to save his frozen soul,
and during these nights,
your bed is no longer a bed,
his lips no longer a kiss.
There are moments
when music leaves his bones,
when words hurt like stones,
and he, unattainable,
acts as if his heart
has never been found.
Don’t sink.
Let these hours come.
Let the light go into its sack.
He needs you.
That unpossessive bird
he wants you to be,
that sweet insolence
who knows no cage.
That wing ache.
Let it flutter
confidently
under his hand.
The sigh you make
as you come
is the same you make
as you go.

 

Madness

06 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by Karen Mary Berr in Poetry

≈ Leave a comment

They call it the Land of Love .
Is there such a thing, so mad,
so utterly lost ?
Other than noon, than moon,
a light not defined by time ?
In this strange world, I, alone
know nothing.
I live inside a shadow,
treat it like a solid thing,
and certainly don’t ask
for understanding.
I see the child with his father,
safe in the heat of his skin,
his pulse is six days long.
This ache, incapable
of treachery, never stopped,
never stops asking.
About that desired country
cut in the shape of a wing,
that will never carry
the weight of his tiny breath.
About that irretrievable joy
cut from all possibility
already on the ground.
The nights keep hushing.
The stars keep falling.
Why can’t they bring
another answer,
a solider repose
than loss ?

October Blade

03 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by Karen Mary Berr in Poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Today I shaved my head
knowing I am not your animal
anymore.
Before life
was splendid,
your blood,
that red metamorphosis,
could become
anything
within me.
I wanted more. More
distortion, more
diversification
more ramifications,
more attacks.
A cosmology
of sperm and eggs
a bestial desire
eating us, insatiable,
insisting on its own
rebirth
on everything
we could have been.
A red miracle
eating my skull
and the pain within it,
a kind assassin
bathed in April beauty.
Then you sentenced me
to forsake your body.
The awakening was brutal,
much more brutal than the blood
had been splendid.
Not being your animal
what was it like to be a woman ?
Not the usual whistles
in the crowded streets
about being sexual
and sulphurous.
–
What is it like
not to be yours ?
–
Sugar,
it tastes like hell.
Every morning I see
hurts me.
Every night shines
like a razor blade.
But today,
in the october light,
while I put a limit
to my wildest senses,
I thought
the machinery of me is over
the woman is over
I’m not more
than a mare
Sugar.
I thought
about your palms
and the fragility of my skull.
And I realized
even led to the slaughter
horses never grieve.

shaved

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • December 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • July 2012

Categories

  • Poetry
  • Uncategorized
  • Video

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy