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Karen Mary Berr – Poetry & Video

Karen Mary Berr – Poetry & Video

Monthly Archives: February 2016

Come, Break

28 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by Karen Mary Berr in Poetry

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That is all not sure.
These two hard things
heart and soul
may shatter as glass,
may split their pods
of flame
when they hit
the floor.
Spill themselves
in slow spasms,
as you come,
down there,
in the small of my back.
And an ocean
blossom into shape and sight,
out of the red of reds,
pale as wine.
And my skin smell
of cum, smashed flowers,
and — bliss.
But this is all not sure.
The glass of joy,
out of which we may be spilled
at any moment
peals inside of me,
then breaks.
Broken, unbroken,
and broken again,
turning
back and forth into
the germinating Always,
or is it — Never ?
I watch your naked feet
dance among
glass splinters
no one can see,
and wonder if
it’s a seal broken
or just
a broken world.

Ice

23 Tuesday Feb 2016

Posted by Karen Mary Berr in Poetry

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It was more than fire.
It was a finer truth.
It came out of nowhere
like a bite inflicted to your hand.
It came as a crack through a glass,
my cheek in your palm.
Time — between two silences
had a sudden change in rhythm.
Yet, it was neither life nor death
I felt, looking into the heart of days.
It was even a pleasure to burn
in my own special way.
I bloomed like these
hermaphrodite flowers
under a sheet of ice.
Above, there was nothing
but that endless farce
we must all play.
Then ice of a finer blue
struk me at your touch.
It burnt without a flame
and was quieter than drug.
If a room could be lit up with it
It’d be such a glorious fire.
For you kept that intensity
of life in the coldest times,
you hid that intensity of joy
underneath —
that is also called beauty.

The Angel & The Poet

21 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by Karen Mary Berr in Poetry

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That morning was an event of some sort.
The bare arm of the sky extended
slowly, its turquoise-veined
skin turned down to the earth,
the sun rising in its palm
in lazy expectancy of something.
A little snow slept between the grasses.
Windows, blind with steam, dismissed
the dark of the house.
Nobody came home anymore,
nobody knew how to remember.
That morning, she wasn’t aiming high,
only trying to keep her breath
going in and out. She thought
the color of the sky was strange
but not the angel with a hopeless smile
in the mirror, trying
to discern his own darkness —
for she had grown tired of miracles.

The angel sat in the middle of his own
mystery, ignoring his role.
There was no trace of exaggeration
in the beating of his wings,
only his eyes were full of language.
“Aren’t you the Angel of Death ? ”
she asked. “Haven’t you bathed
that morning in pure cold light
for my retreat ? ” Nothing
like that”, replied a black
flutter. “I’m here to see you arch.
You, poets, claim so often
to be dying of desire. Now,
in these brief rays of gold,
bend for me. Turn me on. ”
She smiled gently. “Little believer,
you little unbroken thing.
Poets are such phonies.
We often have wise insights
but we don’t live by them at all.
I’m a mess. From dawn
to dusk, I haul a desire of dying.”
The angel stared at her lips,
scarlet, in the mirror.
There was no lie in her fire.
Their souls passed
one over the other. Desire
of dying — Dying of desire.
No one knew anymore
who was the angel,
who was the poet.

Trust

18 Thursday Feb 2016

Posted by Karen Mary Berr in Poetry

≈ 1 Comment

Trust is a torment. This torment is my joy.
I hear a cry, cup my hands around it
not to lose one single drop.
There’s a part of you in the darkness
that shall never appear.
I dare embrace. You will remain,
you don’t need to say more.
Come kiss me, my mouth is made
of night and silk —
I carry your darkness in my hands
as a bowl of fresh milk.

More

18 Thursday Feb 2016

Posted by Karen Mary Berr in Poetry

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More —
between lovers
is not an assertion.
There’s no thorn,
no stone,
in that word.
It goes up in the air
blossoming
into a question.
It goes, unrecognized,
curved,
to invest the other —
More is not
a clinch to grind you
to powder.
Isaac once
stumbled on
that severe flower,
it went up in the air
to be nothing more
than a blur —
Nothing more
than a question
in which the heart
occurred.

Wanting To Live

17 Wednesday Feb 2016

Posted by Karen Mary Berr in Poetry

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There’s no reason. I’m not going to lie.
The sun hangs satisfied over the nothing new.
The silly battles, joys and rubble of your body,
will never alter a constellation. Sanity
will evade you with time, madness turn
into pleasure itself, and love, yes, love,
will always ask for a more unaccustomed wine.

One day you will drop your heart on the green
horizon like a drop of blood in a glass of water,
and all other things will remain but you.
Unimportant, indifferent things, such as color,
rain, a certain sense of beauty and mystery.
A tear between the lashes of your eyes,
a carmine in the silent lines of your lips, waiting.

And no, child, no, there will be no better reason
to stay than to leave, when dreams and memories
will have faded one by one, when time will have gone
at the speed of light, depriving you of History.
No better reason to inhabit this vast orphanage
set for you, than the great insolence of living.

There’s no reason. Life is a fragile thing.
That strange autumn light playing in your hair,
the fruit suffused with its own sweetness,
Desire — that will always be its final call.

On the Origin of

15 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by Karen Mary Berr in Poetry

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Cities and stars melt like sugar.
Time or war shut them down, my love.
I sat down with you at the bottom
of those wells of stone, lit by frost.
They coalesced in a single picture
saturated with red, like the roofs of Zagreb.
In that city you wounded my heart
to pleasure, to pain, like I did later in Paris,
and only then I recognized the world
for what it was. I consented
that its good should also do evil
and its deformity carry ecstasy.
I never asked to be cured of passion
never asked to recover my sanity.
The ruins of my heart stood like a coliseum,
rebellious to oblivion, where could I go ?
I walked the streets clothed in your blood,
poems fell from me, like petals,
like bandages. This is not a mystery.
— All my poetry belongs to your body.
I wear it like a jasmine garland
on a tight crimson dress,
I laugh and dance at the impermanent stars,
the porous sky, I wear it like sweat
in the small of my back
to leave behind,
as I pass your table,
a mingled scent of flowers and flesh.

Love Letter

14 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by Karen Mary Berr in Poetry

≈ 4 Comments

Love is a caesura.
A blank in the word,
a precipice of flesh.
For each consonant
a pleasure — round
as a ripple, penetrative
as sound.
It falls white
on black, like snow,
settles where it falls,
and melts the lines.
Moves within the text
as blood runs to
the heart, hitting
bones. Letter
of stone — letter
of bone, in your stasis
opens its fragile
parenthesis.
Without it, dark letter
you stand
erect — unrealized.
To its caress you offer
a quivering ratio.
For love only drives you
to the edge —
Love only crosses you
out.

I, No longer

12 Friday Feb 2016

Posted by Karen Mary Berr in Poetry

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Loose your need to be right.
Get up and devour your I.
Step out of your mind.
Come clandestine as light,
through your one only fear.
Release your fire. Hurry,
violets crush at my thighs.
Quit your uniform of ice.
Undo that web of stones
closing tight around you.
Don’t — don’t think twice.
Don’t carry your flame
to its dust this time.
Give it to its want
if it’s something human.
Give it to the wind
no one needs to own
or name.
Leave it in the wind
no one ever tamed.

Adrift

11 Thursday Feb 2016

Posted by Karen Mary Berr in Poetry

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Give me a house
taking nothing in,
a solitude of sea,
a solitude of salt,
where the tear rolls
back into its eye
and stones sigh
under firmer skies.
Give me a blue
repose, a polar
privacy, dawns
golden with joy
and dusks purple
as loss. A pulse
admitted to itself,
remembering all.
A purer dark,
a clearer star,
under which
I could kneel,
still, in a finite
infinity.
The grief,
keep it —
all coiled up
in granite.

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