Issue 16

Winter 2004

Ulrike Gerbig

My name is Ulrike Gerbig and I live in Germany as a woman, mum, daughter, teacher, mediator, friend, lover and poet.

Being a person who likes to get close to people and their feelings and thoughts, my life is kind of helter-skelter sometimes. For some time now writing poetry has been my means of  downloading encounters and experiences and the emotions caused by them.

By writing "pain" down, I do not only overcome it, but I transcend it. By writing "love" down, "love" finally shows itself as something much bigger than just the mere feeling to a person on a certain moment. It shows sides neither I nor anybody else sees in the moment when love is happening in real time...maybe in my poems it shows some of its true nature.

Poetry transcends what actually happens in my "real" life: when the words are finally on the page, it is more than what actually happened. In a poem there might be less words than I would need if I told the encounter to a friend, but what is on the page is more dense and more intense than anything I could say in prose and sometimes it amazes me that something like that comes out of me.

My poems are larger than me. They have their own "life" and by that they are the closest that I can get to a glimpse of the divine process of creation, which, in writing manifests itself through me for a very short moment in time and makes me a humble servant to creativity.

My first book of poetry "Every Woman's Blues" just came out with Lapwing Press, Belast and can be purchased via email from Dennis Greig, my publisher (catherine.greig1@ntlworld.com).

The Ride

On crowded subway trains
Moments of being
Seen
Smelt
Felt
As substantial
As a passionate shag
Part of life's
Fuck and run syndrome
Meet
Touch
Rub
Against strangers
Recharging on human warmth
And part
Never to meet again
Lest some accidental synchronicity
Puts us on the same ride
Again.

Dance of the Vampire

Come, talk to me
And let's put flesh
To bones Of corpses
In the closet
Bring lamia
Out to daylight
Finally fulfil
Their death wish
And make them
Rest in peace
Let's name
The ghosts,
Van Helsing,
And walk through
Our haunted house
Heavily armed with
Garlic words
And pointed pole phrases
Let's drive them deep
I into the very heart
Of pain

Let's open up
Pandora's box
And by the music
Of our words
Let's calm the undead down
And make them dance
Our own
Dance of the Vampires.

Mislaid

I must have put love somewhere...
Stored in the fridge for later use?
In my rush hour life
I have no use
For an aching heart and a throbbing cunt
Still
Must not forget them
There might be a best-before date.

November Heat Wave

The gardens of the Alhambra
Black lemon tree lace
Criss-cross an immoderately blue sky
Soft-footed grey creatures
Of unfathomable wisdom
Slit-shut their eyes
Against the harsh sunlight
While I keep mine open
Wide, wild, willing
To catch every ray
My north-poled heart melts
An ice-cream exposed
To a November heat wave.

 

© Ulrike Gerbig

 

 

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