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 Ulrike
Gerbig lives in Germany and has been writing poetry in English
for many years. Influenced by the Beat Poets, she tries to voice
the thoughts and feelings of a modern European woman. Her poetry
has been published by Lapwing Publications, Belfast ("Every
Woman's Blues" (2004), "Love in all the right places" (2005))and
in a self-published collection called "The Looking Glass
Poems" (Lulu.com, 2006).
Her work can also be read in several magazines, e-zines and on
websites like Taj Mahal, Andwerve, Hearts with Sou, "ICP";
London Arts, The Poetry Kit Magazine, Photoaspects,Electric
Acorn, Unlikely Stories, Zygote in my Coffee, Pedestal Magazine,
Dublin Quarterly, "Voices", "LitVision" and Out of Order, Open
Wide,Mouseion, Aestethica and Anthologies, like Voices of
Israel, 2004/2005 and In our own words -a generation defines
itself. She was featured poet of the week on Poetry Superhighway
in January,2005, and in January 2006, featured poet (with
interview) in the April (2005) issue of Voices and featured poet
in the May (2005) issue of Poetic Diversity.
24hours
Dawn
Bbattles blackness
Vanquishes death
With the light blue kiss of hope
Sunrise
A freshly showered day
Dons a crisp shirt of light azure
Makes up its face with
Orange yellow red
Wakes us to life
With a new morning's mint fresh kiss
Noon
Half-time
Harsh light
Turns colour into
Brilliant white
So much already done
So much to do
Nowhere to hide
From the fierce sun
Which pushes us
To greater deeds
Our eyes slit-shut
We try to grasp
The sense and meaning
Of this day
Sunset
The fire of this day
Touches the skies
With flaming lips
It burns
A passionate lover
Close to death
A desperate lust before
The chill embrace of vapid night
Dusk
It wraps itself
In purple haze
In smoky grey
With quiet gaze
It undisturbed takes stock
Of this day's harvest
Night
Its velvet black
Leaves room
For peace.
In its soft folds
We rest and dream,
Children not delivered, not yet born,
Absolved of purpose, duty and of scorn.
Sitting, myself
I sit here
I am bare
I sit here
I am unmade up
I am bare
I sit here
I am bare
I sit here
I am naked
I sit here
I am not hiding
I sit here
I am bare
I am unprotected
I sit here
I am anyone’s prey
I sit here
I open up
I sit here
I am honest
I am naked
I am prey
I am proud
I am what
I am meant to be
I write
I am myself
Adventurous
Destination unknown
“Don’t forget your toothbrush”
I told him
“We are in for a long ride”
We will stop when our minds are weary of travel
We will build a house where
Our hearts tells us to plant a tree
We will lie in the bed we made for
Ourselves and feed each other
Wondrous stories and enigmatic verse
Outside the limits
I really wanted to go there.
Do you remember how I
Said drive, don’t stop!
I want to see what is
Outside the limits,
What lies behind what we
Can actually see from where
We already are, I wanted to
Explore it all, I wanted each
Pixel to burn my retina, to scar it with memories.
Every single bit of sky seemed to call
On me not to stop, the clouds in
your eyes did the same, they asked me
If I was brave enough, if I was serious,
If I would dare to stay and roam beyond the
Limits of your city, of your mind, of your heart.
A poet’s New Year’s resolution
do
not write
shallow sallow
stupid superfluous
silly sanctimonious sterile
stale stanzas
do not
write
write
straight
simple sweet
soulful singular
serious sound
sequences
write
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