Berlin Unspoken Volume 2

Berlin Spoken Word

BerlinUnspoken

Volume 2

Autumn 2016

“A cool magazine for cool kids with cool friends and cool things to say“

Copyright © 2016 by Berlin Spoken Word All authors in this publication reserve the rights to their work.

Cover photograph Copyright Mary Vlasuk © 2016 Cover design by Mary Vlasuk, Beulah Kirupa.

Published in Berlin, Germany

2

EDITORIAL

If learning by doing had clearer guidelines, we wouldn't have had so much fun creating this second collection. What started as a small idea for a newsletter letting people know about various spoken word events in and around Berlin quickly grew into a full literary zine with submissions from people all over the globe, ranging from poems and short stories to artwork and photography. We were so pleased to see the response to the first edition we couldn’t wait to start work on the second, and we were overwhelmed by the number and depth of the submissions we received both from our regular Berlin Spoken Word Live performers and strangers around the world as the word spread. We were also touched to receive so many offers to help and be part of the team. We didn’t need to worry about the difficult second album with so many talented writers and hands on board this time around.

So this is a big thank you to all the artists who submitted something, all the words of support from friends and family, and to you dear readers for joining us for the second edition of Berlin Unspoken.

When I was approached by Naniso earlier this year to help with this project I was wary, it had been a long time since I had done anything creative and was nervous to put my name to something. But I was quickly inspired both by his vision of what spoken word can do and also by all the wonderful performers at Berlin Spoken Word Live and other events around town, seeing them open up on stage and be truly vulnerable, sharing something so personal and heartfelt, I wanted to be a part of this community in some small way. This city and its residents never fail to amaze me – the breadth and depth of art that is created here, and the freedom and possibilities that are offered to people to explore their creativity.

We hope you enjoy our second volume as much as we enjoyed creating it for you.

Beulah Kirupa October 2016

3

Content 3

Editorial

4

Table of Contents

7

Creating a Safe Space for Poetry: An Open Letter

by Anonymous

8

Itch

by Ida Loggert

9

Fresh Milk

by Marcus O’Shea

10

Avoiding the Mole and Other Things That Did Not Happen

by Charlie Birch

11

Words

by Estelle Garstang

12

Dead Courage

by Graham MacMillan-Mason

14

Let Me Draw You With Words: Poetry Portraits

by Sydney Spaceship

18

Hope

by Soar

19

Artwork

by Mandy van de Schilde

4

20

New Zealand Poem

by Julia StĂźrzl

20

At the Corner

by Anti Muse

21

Affliction

by Susan Grouchy

22

Fort Waste

by Marcus Jade

24

Gedicht auf einer Zweitsprache

by Digne Glatzel

25

Soho Alcoves

by Naniso Tswai

26

White Picket

by Selene Ross

28

Sharing Words That Matter

30

Tongue/Zunge

by Ellen Van Benschoten

31

A Dream I Just Woke Up From

by Toyah Webb

30

Untitled

by Malene Lauritsen

32

Unspoken

by Richard Schemmerer

35

Meet the Editors

5

Photo by Giampietro Balia 6

Creating Safe Spaces for Poetry From Brexit to the US election, from the global climate crises to the influx of refugees across borders, we are daily encountering a world where civility is unraveling. In many ways, the unrest, endless pedagogical rhetoric, and circus shenanigans make fertile ground for performers and artists. Yet they also set-off a collective shame spiral that slowly erodes our ability to be kind to each other, and has the potential to erase empathy and compassion.

When we get up on stage to share our art, we are also sharing the extremes of ourselves. The range between highest highs and lowest lows, and the events and traits that describe those two points vary widely from person to person. What we hope for when we get up there is dependent on the moment, the space and the artist. Some want instant ego-gratification. Some want to share what they see as an alternate point of view.

Some want to educate, elucidate, and enlighten. Some want to entertain. No matter the goal or the reason, we can't help that it starts with, emanates from, and finishes with the self. We use the voice, the body, the mind and thoughts to communicate with rooms full of strangers. It is no easy thing to disconnect our feelings of vulnerability from how we are seen as we leave that platform. Even rousing receptivity can create feelings of raw emotionality.

For these reasons, and because we are all humans who say we like other humans, creating safe spaces to share is a priority for any event or organizer. What we know about the people who get onstage is only what we see or what they tell us, and even that doesn't begin to explain who they are, how they got here, and what they have experienced. If you are sitting in an audience, you can imagine that many women, and some men, have been sexually assaulted. You can imagine that a large number of people have lost a close family member to a terrible illness. You can imagine that everyone, every single one, has body image issues - from they don't like their hair, to they want to lose weight, to they want to gain weight, to they wish some parts of themselves were bigger or smaller, to they don't feel comfortable living in their assigned gender. Imagine some of them are working three jobs to get by, some are sending money home to a trapped family, some came here not knowing the language, some are invisibly disabled, some have been discriminated against because of who they love or the hue of their flesh. Imagine they are not like you. Imagine they did not grow up as you did. Imagine your own hardships and then imagine that there are hardships and endurance tests in life that you have never encountered. Imagine inviting those stories into your life, so that you may broaden your own experience and compassion, and put your life's challenges into perspective. Imagine liking them for these differences.

Safe spaces transcend judgment and promote listening. Safe spaces utilize kind speech, also known as nonviolent communication (NVC) for interpersonal interactions. Safe spaces do not shy away from difficult material, or censor words, thoughts, or ways of expression. They do cultivate a feeling of respect for all the humans in the space, and all of their unknown stories and life events. They do not tolerate any type of baiting, any singling out of individuals or groups for any kind of derision, or blaming and shaming words and behaviour.

Berlin Spoken Word (BSW) is committed to creating safe spaces for your words, and your person. It is building a community of artists and writers who can share and co-create in a non-judgmental environment.

BSW asks that you listen openly to different viewpoints, and people at different stages on their journey from you. It asks that you speak with respect around issues that might be treacherous for some members of the audience and community. It asks you to consider how you are framing your own stories - are you selfshaming, blaming, reacting with violence - or are you considering, processing, and openly gifting this small piece of yourself to the audience.

We are flawed, imperfect beings. This might be why we are drawn to these forums to share and grow.

BSW seeks to cultivate a community of creative people who care for themselves and each other with empowering work and words, one that does not cut itself off from the larger community, but interacts to foster a fluid interdependence where art, words, and communication matter.

by Anonymous, Berlin 2016 7

itch don't think that thought just like you can't scratch that itch or the eczema will spread a tiny red dot turned by friction and filthy fingernails into an infectious ooze exuding out of your pores out of more pores every day you scratch no, don't think that thought like you can't peel those scabs let the flaking skin fall off on its own now sooth yourself cool lotion, cortisol, and cleanliness every day again cool lotion, cortisol, and cleanliness

Poem and artwork

and you’ll have to sleep wearing white cotton gloves because those dreams will still be itching

by Ida Loggert

and don't think that thought 8

Fresh Milk Sometimes you smell like fresh milk The good stuff no skim Three-point-five percent You ask me to swim naked I think about my body Heavy, sore, broken joints Popped out in places by

I strip off by the water

Rough hands at other times

Push my body in

The cold of the water

Skin petal pink from the shock of the cold

The fat kid’s perennial fear

With you

Of taking off your shirt

I’m a body at its barest Trying, inch by inch, to introduce itself

I’ve been dreaming of Islands

To unfamiliar temperatures

Of cliffs worn down by salt-wind

Sometimes you smell like fresh dirt

That rusts all things in time

Soil and river, slight moss

Of smelling you, after the ocean

Off your lips

Salt and fresh milk

A hint of green, body leaf-trembling

White as clean bone

Against the water round my neck

Of wide spaces enclosed by water Jutting hills dotted with cottages

Sometimes you smell, like

Horizon broken only

Warm cream

By fragments of earth

Legs around my waist Suspended by the weight of water

We spin, ballroom dancing in liquid space Until, giddy and tired From moving through We emerge, and you smell Like Irish butter, cold and radiant or A distant fire that wafts up from Open tobacco pouches

by Marcus O’Shea 9

Avoiding the Mole and

by Charlie Birch

“Promise not to write anything where I recognize myself,” she demands, and I say nothing. “Promise,” she says again, and I tell her I only write fiction.

She cannot be the only person, ever, in the history of women, who has driven someone else crazy with a mole on the back of her neck. It is small and brown like most moles are. If the triangular tip of her short hair is the coast, then this mole is the tiny island seen through binoculars, like the island I once saw off the coast of Wales, home to several sheep and a monastery. The monastery was presumably built on this tiny mole-like island so that the monks would not be distracted by mainland frivolities like pistachio ice-creams and the nuns eating them.

When sun-creaming all the parts of her she cannot reach, with hands which remain stubbornly sandy for two and a half weeks, I look at this mole and it looks back at me and whispers touch me, touch me. And I say no and avoid its eye, because what if this is the button that will melt her coldness on intercity buses and in cafes once and for all, and then where would I be? This is a rhetorical question. Now I worry that this standoff with a mole may indirectly be the cause of her skin cancer in five years’ time.

She cannot be the only person, ever, in the history of women, to have changed her tampon on the windblown, tree-less top of a mountain, about which there is little more to say than that it happened, and that I relished my role as discreet look-out, guarding the far-away path we had walked and scanning for people, cawing, “Now, now!” like some sort of mountain bird.

In the moments when she is unconscious enough to not be able to stamp her iron opinions onto the memory foam of my brain, I argue with her in my head. And when I sleep, I dream she films my teeth falling out after she has kissed me, and says: “You can give those to your mother, she will know what to do with them.” I wake up weeping because it is clear we have waited too long to kiss one another in waking life, and because my mother stopped pretending a long time ago that mothers know better than their children.

She is also not the only person who loves watermelons, to have leaned across the table with a drinking straw in her mouth to inhale, literally inhale straight into her lungs, the pink juice from the scraped out husk of the fruit. She is not the first or only person to have coughed and laughed at the same time, to have said “You’re killing me” with hair three shades lighter than its color in the darker, colder city where we both live. I know that my hair also has been sun-bleached blonder, because she touched it as we stood in the lift, the fine hairs at my temples, with one finger. I was surprised. Aside from the sandy sun-creaming, we do not touch one another; for example I do not lean my head against her when I am tired.

10

Other Things That Did Not Happen

“I will miss this,” she’d said after she’d crept up behind me on the airplane and whispered “Boo!” in my ear to see me flinch. I sneeze one last time to make her laugh. Make me jump for ever, I want to say to her when we stiffly hug goodbye.

We are back in the darker, colder city, standing before her front door after sushi, and I say nothing of the sort. I am reluctant to compete with what she claims is the most beautiful woman in the world: darker, taller, thinner, older, cleverer. Extensive internet research long after midnight revealed that whilst the most beautiful woman in the world is winning at all of these things, we have the same irregular teeth, a sideways fang which smiles before the rest of the mouth.

It is fiction that we both smelled of dehydrated airplane air and pickled ginger, that we were both browner and blonder than we had been when we had left several weeks ago. That I felt smaller and she looked like she was pretending not to be lonelier. It is fiction that we thought new thoughts about one another. Perhaps she thought: “I wish you had left me alone more.” Perhaps I thought: “I wanted to touch your hair so badly it made my stomach churn, but the moment in the lift evaporated faster than spilled water on the terrace in the midday sun, and anyway, now my boyfriend is standing there waiting for us to finish hugging stiffly so it would be inappropriate to do so.” Perhaps, one of us thought: “Three years is a long time to be in love with someone without telling them.”

11

Words Why is it that some words come more easily than others?

I do not understand Why some stories stumble out of the pen, rushed, blinking bemusedly in a crowd in this new world of bright paper, and others choke me for years, dancing at the back of my brain, flickering across my eyelids when I am falling asleep.

If they are so reluctant to be caught, why do they tantalise me so, keeping a safe distance that still ensures I do not forget them?

These words must serve some purpose They drag me by my wrists down hidden lanes of thought I didn’t know I had and stalk me through sleepless nights Grasping, fumbling, snatching, falling But my dizzy desperation only fuels me.

Perhaps it is the song of my soul that haunts me A piercing melody that is singular to none yet unique to all Much as a butterfly, if you chase it, you will only succeed in driving it away It seems to me That the only way to capture those elusive phrases is to let them go and wait to see whether or not they come back to you.

And so the words wind their way towards your hands, curling up contentedly As if they had ever wanted anything else.

by Estelle Garstang 12

DEAD COURAGE I have hit old age.

That kind of “comfortable in a suit” old age.

In my city, people are monuments and everyone has a slogan.

The animals all have human heads and speak in mainly broken English.

This was ironic. Since their words normally didn’t make sense or fit together in a sentence.

I often get a bus to a different city or town and fantasize that the residents of the bus are the only survivors of the zombie apocalypse.

That those outside only want us for what we can offer. Our hearts, our brains and our other body parts.

This makes me feel better. I always get off the bus.

by Graham MacMillan-Mason

13

Let Me Draw You With Words

Sydney Spaceship gives us an insight into his project “Poetry Portraits” and how the next “Zu verschenken” box might just contain your real hidden treasure

Two years ago I was walking through Rixdorf, which My first poem on the Triumph was about Batman. I is a beautiful neighborhood in Berlin. A couple of hung it on the wall in my hallway at home. Many people were putting boxes in front of their doors. others followed and the Poem-Wall slowly turned Everyone in Berlin knows, that those “zu verschen- into a Poem-House. We had poems hanging in the ken” (give away) boxes can be absolute treasures, kitchen, bathroom, on the ceiling, on the outside of so I dove into one of them. Between old clothes the apartment door. Poems everywhere and about and broken tools I found a dusty box. everything, from painful pee “This can't be,” I thought to myself as experiences to secret love I brushed off the dust. TRIUMPH. It letters. I couldn´t stop. The “It is a poetic form actually said “Triumph” on the top of typing sound became my new the box and I immediately knew what mantra. of psychoanalysis. that meant. A typewriter!

And with the results I form a lyrical picture, that somehow reflects the person.”

It was in perfect condition, everything was moving right, and the clicksounds gave me a wavy shiver of satisfaction. “Can I really take this,” I asked its previous owner, “Sure man,” he assured me, “I think it´s still working. Maybe needs some oil and a new ribbon, but nothing big. Enjoy it!” Strolling home, I grinned. Never before had I written on a typewriter, but for some reason I felt it would open up a whole new horizon to me. Typing is like carving your words in stone.

You can´t delete. Can't go back. Can´t think twice.

Straightforward and unforgiving.

At some point I understood that it cannot go on like this. My poetry started to grow beyond the capacities of our flat. It wanted to go out. See the sunlight. Play with strangers on the streets and enjoy the pleasure of words with them.

That´s how Poetry Portraits came to life. Twice a week I take my typewriter to different markets and set up my poetry stand. “Let me draw you with words,” it says and people react very curiously to it. “So what is it that you do?” they ask. Well, I haven't really found an answer to this question, because it differs from poem to poem.

14

Girl from Jupiter — Lisa, drawn at Mauerpark Flea Market

Mainly, a person can sit next to me and we have a with a warm tingly sensation and the pleasure of conversation. Sometimes five minutes, sometimes really meeting someone new. an hour. From that conversation, I form some sort of idea about that person; about who that person is. What makes them laugh, what makes them cry. I started to take pictures of the people and their How do their eyes look and at what point do they poems with the idea of one day publishing a little light up. It is a poetic form of psychoanalysis. And book of this project. Right now I am sitting in a cafe in LA. My typewriter sits next to me. with the results of that analysis I form I will be travelling through California a lyrical picture, that somehow refor a month and write as many “Typing flects the person. This doesn't always personal poems as possible. A work out, especially with people who is like wandering poet making his way aren't really showing themselves. But through the west coast. carving your even then, it is somehow reflecting who they are; at least in my eyes, in words in stone. that moment, through that little Who would've thought that this dusty You can't go frame that they allow me to look box that I found on the streets of through. back.”

Berlin would send me on a journey like this. I am excited to see what else On the other hand, it isn't necessarily will unfold from Poetry Portraits, such a deep and emotional process at all. which other beautiful stories will come out of this Sometimes, when I have the feeling that the typewriter and how much more I will learn and person is looking for something more easy and fun, develop as a person and as an artist.

I just fool around with words or make up a language or we joke around with funny ideas and stories. In any case, it is always a very intimate Find Sydney at Mauerpark Flea Market on Sundays. situation (a la “draw me like one of your french For more poems and musings from girls”-Titanic-kind of thing) that leaves both sides Sydney Spaceship, check out: www.spaceshipismus.com 15

The silent dark — Mauerpark

16

Burning down the house — Peter, Mauerpark

17

Hope Trust is a precious gift from the soul and it’s greater than love. Who earns it has won two lives’ worth.

It’s been hours now deepening the night with the air wafting its scents around. She was still staring at his face, lost in his sight like a child in a store of sweet delights: she admired and adored every detail about those eyes she hardly met, yet they felt as though they had never parted from her light in all their glowing life. Something she couldn’t quite grasp about those traits, curves and hair, too rebellious, like arrogance over innocence, yet she was sure that he must have come from some forever-land and was to stay - a cast simply and already set by some prequel of life, when they might have met and shared trust. The world’s logic would contradict such unity, but there was too much familiarity to feel about him, too many riddles were answered by genuine occurrences, and too much destiny rippling backwards targeted a future of essence. There was a déjà vu of togetherness in those untethered sensations, which she set free, relishing him dearly with all the definitions one could find, from soul to body and back.

“Try to rest,” he uttered without moving an eyebrow, as though he were already in her mind, soothing thoughts down, while arousing feelings to exuberant degrees, where reality was passionately in love with dreams. She was not just some stardust, rather a sun to him, something he always felt it should be his, but he lost faith somehow, along the tortuous course of life; and now, she was lying beside him, so pure and fragile, as if the entire light of the universe would depend only on him to keep it bright from that day onward. Yet, this great gift came with a same weight of responsibility: the rediscovery of hope, almost a ghost to him, which he had to protect if only for her eyes, like gods would defend their mighty temples with unleashed meraki.

As it is known that the human mind is the comfort zone where emotions are free to play contradictory scenes, fear already settled in, ensnaring his tenacity to win a battle without its real existence. So, he gave in, hibernating in the den of expectancies and waiting for the time to hone up eclectic turbulences. While time played its card upon a heavy mind, for soon enough he almost predicted a future deplete of meaning, with people of no true actions and a world of mere distractions; it was an abyss his heart was sinking into, while she was pushed afar by his bleak scars, like a diaphanous sun left to die out without its eruptive sparks.

In this swift perilous test of humans by their universe, only the latter knew the mystical rule which always applied, regardless of space or time: what destiny ties, people can’t untie. It was not long before one dawn sent him a flicker of orange, tangled in his hair like a divine sign to wear, and awoke him from a forgotten dream murmuring “you will be ok, in the morning.” A morning with no special meaning except that she was standing there, before him, summoned anew to life by a message he must have sent in the night, although he couldn’t remember the fact; all he could feel was joy and her warmth wrapping the room like raw details over swaying mirages.

Further away on a shelf, her phone was still flashing in blue his unopened message as if it were winking “ok;” she hadn’t had time to read it, while rushing in the night in a yellow car to find the only orange light she cared about.

18

You fall into people, the same way they fall into you. You could come in, I would allow you to, but once you do, you won't be the same person.

Artwork by Mandy van de Schilde

Like a song running for a poem’s metaphors just to be infused with fresh breaths of meanings, his silent repentance was already saving the world with a desired strength he never knew he possessed. “I lost my faith, but…, I can’t give up on you,” he whispered. “It simply means that hope itself has fallen for you,” she answered with a caring smile and the certainty of a child, genuinely solving mature puzzles.

On a whatever day, a dove was dashing off his feathers in the middle of a yard where only sunrays and calmness dominated an ineffable beauty, like in the sacred dwellings of the world above, where happiness was supposed to be adorned. It was the view that their window pointed towards.

by Soar 19

New Zealand Poem A dark forest Mist in your hair Feeling sun coming For brightness to share Floating through branches Through leaves and through air Enlightening the darkness With warmth and less Shadows to bear

The mist is sparkling The shadows retreat The sun is so strong Do defeat The despair

by Julia Stürzl

At the Corner At the corner, on the side of the street, that‘s where we meet At the corner, under nobody‘s eyes, that‘s where my melody and your‘s collide At the corner, in the greenest grass, I forgot for a second, how grey the day was

At the corner, in mildest sunshine I dreamed of being yours, you dreamed of being mine At the corner, in this big town, your name was my secret, your affection my crown At the corner, when day turns to night, we leave everything up to the future, for us to decide

by Anti Muse

20

Affliction Sometimes, You just want it.

Other times, You need it.

At all times, You can’t resist it.

When you get home You shut your blinds You lock your door You turn off your lights You pretend you aren’t home.

You hide your shame And replace it with immeasurable pleasure.

Crawl into bed Ignore your work And turn on your divine vice.

The black and red gets your pulse running the excitement is loading You can’t wait any longer You open a world of possibilities A whole new place better than your own It starts off as one night, then two, A lunch break here or there Every day you create a sort of ritual Lights off, door closed, in bed.

Lights, Door, Bed. It’s not that bad.

Until one day You realize You’ve left all your friends behind in favour of the friends you think you made The danger of having everything at your finger tips makes escaping real life a whole lot easier Especially when the world exists on Netflix.

Addiction comes with every new title added.

by Susan Grouchy 21

Fort Waste

by Marcus Jade I’ve been to this place, once before,

Having overheard while I was drinking;

This state of mind in this state of mine

That this place is an Indian burial ground,

Not knowing anything

With impenetrable values set in churches,

This place had stored for me

On every other corner

I escaped to this place going northeast.

For the native and settlers who resided here before.

On the prairie;

To me it became a test,

Away from another straightforward

To see how the social circles

Nowhere going city

Overlapped and tangled

The townies northeast called this place big,

And why others festered and rooted,

And never peaked outside.

And I sinking myself in.

I found it as it was, small and wobbly Deciding to put it in my back pocket.

The innocent roamed freely about

I learned from what it had become

As the quaint feeling could caste over me

From its Indiana heritage

Walking under the pale aura of life

Of blood and pilgrim

On the Wells Street Bridge

Forager from afar, calling this home

Looking down the Saint Mary

Amish Settling, Kentucky Dutch Backwoods

Asking myself often,

And undercover Abolitionists.

“Is it time for me to go?”

Fort Wayne.

All the while across

A spy’s run from Ohio, in Michiana

The mixing and mingling with the townies;

Where three rivers ride and converge.

The offbeat hipsters and brats, alike, Punk and edged life, intertwined, At a café all awaiting their fix Of coffee, dripping at their mouths

And steaming, bellowing hookahs Brandishing their words in favor Of their best friends All waiting to play, A place we all used to meet once, With friends of friends.

Content with feeling that this is it.

Beyond me, and my naïve ways,

I learned how different we were.

22

For as they dwelled in their Decatur, New Haven, and Huntington homes, Their West Central lofts; private education.

Unable to swallow their own privilege There are pulled away from their fathers hands, their mothers tradition In a cry of rebellion However, they still clung on tightly To the bucks with their thumbs Down on South Calhoun, Where differences are shunned and embraced Outlaws and vagabonds running Is not something to admire;

With disparity chipped in them.

Looking upon with a much wider eye.

Staying close to their own kin and kind.

I found myself with all of them, though

To even those and up and left,

In wild nights blurred with intoxication

But remain loyal to their Indiana home.

Running through corn field

I came and stayed for many a night

Drunk and out of mind

And I kept my promise to not any longer;

Lying awake in a pool of spilled liquor and banjos

To row away from the Maumee-

Hippies in Grabil, and wannabe wifed- up homebodies in Leo

To row away from the churches,

Staying there and Saint Joes place.

And away from the land protecting it.

White girls using me

I too, after learning a hard truth.

To broaden their horizons

That this place, like many there.

I ran with it, and all too much has gone.

Will stay and remain the same.

Away from it all

Those who stay knowing and willingly;

Away and into the abyss

For their good homes and security,

The despairs shadow covered us,

And in comfort of knowing who they are.

And the oil burned out.

For I did not know enough, but knew one thing; That this place is that;

Go along the trail just like

Nothing special;

The rest of them

Nothing unique;

Surrounded by their own knowing

All no different from the rest.

In their town that saved itself

I have realized that All- American 23

Was wenn…

Was wenn ich ein Gedicht auf Deutsch schriebe?

Auch wenn es nicht meine Muttersprache ist Auch wenn es viele Sprachfehler gäbe Auch wenn einige mich nicht verstehen würden...

Trotzdem versuche ich es.

Gedicht auf einer Zweitsprache

by Digne Glatzel

Ich muss dir aber sagen, mein Worschatz ist klein und meine Sätze sind kurz.

Das heißt, alle meine Gedanken und Gefühle sind zu vereinfachen.

Ich bin glücklich Ich bin traurig Ich will dich Ich will allein sein Simpel.

Da ich dann beginne, nicht nur auf Deutsch zu schreiben, sondern auch zu denken, Dann muss alles nicht so kompliziert sein.

Plötzlich verstehe ich, warum du meine Hand nie halten konntest Plötzlich verstehe ich, wieso wir jedes Wochenende, das ganze Wochenende zusammen sein konnten, aber du nie völlig da warst, nicht wirklich Plötzlich verstehe ich, wie ich nicht genug war Oder, Mindestens, Wenn ich die richtigen Worte nicht finde, um es mir zu erklären, dann höre ich halt auf, daran zu denken.

Es ist ja einfacher so.

Unwissenheit ist Glückseligkeit So kann man es auch auf Deutsch sagen, oder?

Egal.

Manchmal, finde ich, das beste Option ist halt...

Halt...

Halt zu...

Halt aufzugeben.

Manchmal gibt es keine richtigen Worte zu finden.

Aber, Ich meine Ich darf trotzdem in den anderen Sprachen suchen, Oder?

24

Soho Alcoves

started checking out those women who stand in the

I waited for her on Piccadilly Circus, next to that lit-

pretty at all, but still I wouldn’t have minded spend-

tle Bagel stall that has been there for years. I love

ing some time with them. Not like in a cheesy corny

Piccadilly Circus, with its neon lights, sulphuric air

way, but in a different way. Well, at least they would-

and erratic noises. I like sitting there and laughing at

n’t be from fucking Persia. She must have noticed

all those people looking up at the huge plasma bill-

how I was looking around, as she started to talk

boards, they remind me of penguins with their beaks

about how her father does not allow her to come

up in the air. It cracks me up each time.

here at night. Man, why is it that girl’s love to sound

I always get kind of anxious before first dates. It has

all prude and stuff, it’s like they think that it will

various doorways and alcoves of Soho. They weren’t

make them sound more sexy or something.

nothing to do with the girl, its just this thing I do. I start playing each scenario around in my mind, I

We finally decided to go for coffee. The original

even play through every detail. At first I crack myself

plan had been dinner, but by this point neither of us

up, but then I go too far and end up making myself

could stomach the idea of prolonged conversation. I

nervous. I guess you can tell that I have never been

tried to poke fun at her little mannerisms, but she

in a long-term relationship. Its not like I don’t want

was too quick to get offended. It cracks me up how

to, its just that each time things don’t quite work out.

girls get all touchy about silly stuff! I think she started

What they don’t tell you when you are a kid is that

getting annoyed too, as when we finally got to the

girls are pretty boring, and after a while you just want

counter she ordered a small decaf latte. I tried to

to get rid of them. I wish my dad had sat me down

make some wisecrack about all the choices they give

and explained this to me from the get go.

you at Starbucks, but she didn’t even crack a smile.

We had agreed through nervous texting that we

Man this girl was boring!

would meet next to the bagel stall, and go for a bite

We sat down and made lazy conversation for about

to eat somewhere nearby. After making me wait

half-an-hour. Gosh it was painful. At one point I

around for 15 minutes, she finally arrived.

started blowing bubbles into to my frappuccino. My

Her name was Afsaneh, which she explained meant

little sister does that, and we always get a hoot out of

‘A fairy tale’ in her language. She gave me that whole

it. Afsaneh looked decidedly unamused though. Af-

ter a while she said that she had to go and meet her

spiel about how her parents are from Persia. I always hate that shit, I mean, I can understand that in the

mother somewhere. I offered to walk her to the sta-

present climate nobody wants to admit they are from

tion, but she said that she was fine. And that was fine

Iran, but come on, fucking Persia! The way she said

with me. We said our hollow goodbyes, and that was

it too, like she was an exotic dancer or something.

the end of things.

Anyway, we started walking and making conversa-

I hung around for another ten minutes blowing bub-

tion. I asked her a bunch of questions, most of which

bles in my frappuccino, and then headed back to

she gave short answers to.

Soho to check out those alcoves.

by Naniso Tswai

To be honest, I quickly lost interest in her. And I 25

White Picket

by Selene Ross My brother ran into Darren’s wife one night about three months after the storm. Our dog had gotten loose and she had helped my brother catch him. “It’s too bad we can’t be friends anymore,” she said. She was wearing her grey-blonde hair in a frayed ponytail and she smelled like smoke even though she had quit last year. She told him things that night didn’t happen the way we thought they did. “Yeah, I don’t know about that,” my brother told her, taking my dog by the collar back home. I wonder if she knew we got that dog because of Darren, to make sure it never happened again.

For weeks after the storm I couldn’t stand to be in my room alone. My father installed a motion-sensitive light outside my bedroom window. It was meant to be comforting, I’m sure, but it would turn on in the middle of the night when the wind blew too hard and I would wake up bathed in this threatening fluorescent light. A light that was unwelcome and startling, leaving a creeping feeling on me even when I had slept through it. I unscrewed the light-bulb after a couple nights. One night after I had gone to bed my mother dropped a bowl in the kitchen and I woke up screaming, sure that something terrible was happening.

The summer after, my mother had a picket fence put up around our house. She paid my brother and me to paint it white. When I see white picket fences around other suburban houses I wonder what trauma inspired them. I imagine how the teenage daughters in the houses behind the fences must have felt when their fathers found their forty-year old neighbor perched outside their bedroom window, watching them.

I spent that summer painting our picket fence. My brother gave up on his portion so I did it, burning my shoulders pink in paint-stained clothes, painting stroke after stroke of blinding white. I remembered my mother told me that after her father died when she was young, she thought robbers were always waiting outside their house, knowing that her father was not there to protect them. She left pointed tacks on white pieces of paper around the house, thinking somehow that if the robbers saw something white, they would have to put their hands on it. I laughed when she told me this, years before the storm, but now I knew she was right.

Somehow, she was right.

Two years had passed before the court date came. Darren was sitting there, at the desk opposite the witness stand. When I had to look at him to identify him for the lawyer I let my eyes blur, not wanting to see his face again. I looked at his wife, with their young son in her lap. The little boy wore glasses, the plastic kind with an elastic to fit around his bald head. I met Darren’s wife’s blue eyes and could not read her expression. But her

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lips were chapped, lipstick smeared beyond the left corner of her bottom lip. I looked at the jury instead and thought about how stupid it was that these random strangers were going to hear things I had not even told my closest friends at school. One woman was wearing a coral-colored blouse and the weeks after the court date I saw that color everywhere and it made me nauseous.

Darren’s lawyer asked me if I ever saw Darren outside my window. No, I had not. How could I be sure, then, that it was Darren outside my window? I watched the typist’s hands pause over the keyboard. It didn’t feel fair, what he was asking me, he was trapping me. I opened and closed my mouth before I answered, feeling the same way I did when the bright spotlight outside my window woke me up. I heard the bushes shake, I finally said. It was windy that night, wasn’t it? Does the wind ever shake the bushes outside your window? I shrugged in response, my eyes hot and itchy, staring at the woman’s coral blouse.

The house next door went up for sale. My mother had heard through a string of neighborhood moms that they were moving to Boston. They left during the six weeks I was working at a summer camp. I came back and a new family with two small daughters had moved in. We never told them what had happened.

I babysat those little girls nearly every weekend, chasing after them in the big backyard. I cooked them lunch in the kitchen, laid them to sleep in the bedrooms, blew bubbles with them in the front yard. I walked through the rooms where he used to live. The rooms I would have been in if I had babysat his son on the many occasions he had asked me to. I never said yes then, being too busy or too young to be bothered. But now I fell asleep on the downstairs couch after the girls were asleep, waiting for their parents to come home. I slept soundly, safe and warm.

I think about Darren’s wife the night my brother ran into her when our dog got out, a dog we would never have had if my father had not caught Darren outside my window, drinking a beer and watching me. I was watching them from my bedroom window, peering behind the thick new curtains to where she stood, barefoot, with her blonde-grey hair frizzy and her white cotton nightgown wrinkled. I had seen her so many times before then, pushing their son in a stroller around the block or unloading groceries from the car. But I only ever think of her in a wrinkled white nightgown, telling my brother that things never happened the way we thought they did. To me, in Boston, or wherever they are now, she is still there under the yellow streetlight, calling a lost dog towards her.

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Sharing Words That Matter: Addiction BSW’s Poetry Outreach Program We are pleased to announce that the second edition of Sharing Words That Matter was very successful.

Our Guerilla poets met and performed on both Saturday and Sunday, performing their pieces in small groups to roughly 40 different audiences on Tempelhofer Feld. The Guerilla Poets included returning as well as new poets. The vast majority of audiences responded warmly. Some even tried unsuccessfully - to give us money after our performances. We were able to learn, grow and improve from our first experience. Primarily, Tempelhofer Feld proved to to be a much more conducive location than Görlitzer Park.

wholly different beast. And though Berlin has no hesitation in bathing in the coolness of its drug fuelled clubbing culture, all too often it forgets, and perhaps intentionally so, the darker side of drugs, that is to say, addiction... and all its nefarious associates!

Be your addiction candy or heroin, that sweet feeling of release and joy is the same. The shadow though, that pre-empts and stalks its aftermath are altogether different. Whoa unto you if you fall into the trappings of cool drugs.

Once again, we would like to thank Max Bringmann, Estelle Garstang, Ida Loggert, E Amato and Naniso This month’s theme - addiction - has both immediate Tswai for their participation and everyone who and political resonance. Over the years Berlin has supported this project. grown and mutated into a haven drug city, one that draws the awe and tourism of countless individuals. For more information about Sharing Words That Matter Some of whom look for the honest Berlin, others for and how you can get involved visit www.facebook.com/ the nightlife... but now those two have become sharingwordsthatmatter/ or contact us at inextricably linked, and so the city has itself become a BerlinSpokenWord@gmail.com 28

Testimonials From The Poets On a bright hot Saturday, we gathered to head off to Tempelhofer Feld to 'share words that matter.' Our topic for this one was addiction. There were four poets and a visiting theatre-maker who became our documentarian.

We split up into pairs of poets and headed out to talk to strangers sunning themselves on one of the last beautiful summer days. It was scary to go up to the first group, but they were welcoming, and that made it easy to go on to the next group. We found a whole bunch of people who had just participated in a solidarity rally with Polish women and they listened so respectfully and even clapped for us when we finished. We even found a group with two people in it who were visiting Berlin, but had been at BSW: Live the Thursday before. Only one group declined to hear poems.

During last month’s session of SWTM, the team improved on its first performance and was able to connect with the different audiences at Tempelhofer Feld in more intimate ways. Undoubtedly, splitting up in teams of two played a big part in the success of our session. With two of us instead of five approaching groups and asking to recite our poetry, we came across less intimidating as a team and more like we were simply wanting to pay a free-of-charge service to our audience. In addition, much like last time, each piece performed was unique and dealt with the theme of addiction in its own way, thus catering to the different and differing moods of our audience. For instance, Max presented a more traditional piece of Spoken Word, while Naniso tried out a less conventional, entertaining style, making for an interesting mix. The team was able to reach even more people than last time and engaged with its audience in conversation on the topic of addiction on several occasions, making for a successful afternoon of Sharing Words That Matter.

My partner and I found ourselves surprisingly tired after an hour of poeting in this way.

Maybe it was the sun, the words, the day, the topic, or just the exposure, but it felt nothing like performing poems in a basement. It was worth overcoming the fear and the resistance to go out into the community and give them a different view of poetry and of our topic.

Next month: Terror.

E Amato

Max Bringmann

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Tongue/ Zunge

by Ellen Van Benschoten

NO I am not from HERE Ich wohne hier seit fünf Jahren ?

I’ve lost count lost in bilingual brain farting is Alltag I don’t remember the one-tongued American girl when Berlin was just an exit on the Jersey turnpike

That was a time when the world was a city, a car ride when you loved someone you loved someone you didn’t have them love I am a split boxer’s ugly mouth of language spitting myself out like foreign teeth

Who has taken residence in WIESO kannst du so gut Deutsch? this twisted wieso warum weswegen? tongue? why the fuck do you speak Und warum bist du HIER? like that?

Thus my presence is marked I tried by whys and wherefores Man hört aber gar keinen Akzent!

I must justify my But I will betray myself reason for being soon they’ll hear Is it just me the American or the German falling over grammar fetishization turning every citizen of DASEIN? into a hamburger BEING stuck to THERE The American civil war becomes a face-off there being between two fractions THERE is no BEING of pissed-off patties without a THERE in my Aussprache My new tongue belongs neither Meine deutschen Wörter haben THERE nor keine Kindheit HERE someone once said My new tongue it could also be has no childhood My new tongue Meine Kindheit hat keine has no mother deutschen Wörter My new tongue 30

made friends with a Zunge The Zunge made my tongue feminine and she cannot explain herself She cannot speak without revealing the tongueness of the Zunge Can she stake her claim on place in words pulled up by roots cracking on the Zungenspitze?

Willst du hier bleiben?

Do I want to stay HERE? Where do you go when HERE and THERE have collapsed and home is unheimlich when I can say I want to go home but am heimlich Zuhause

?

A Dream I Just Woke Up From

by Toyah Webb

In a house with bad wallpaper. Celebrating another year closer to death with rich chocolate cake and people I don't know. I quickly become disillusioned and go looking for old friends & lovers.

The earth outside/above, was I underground?--is salty, dead.

I see a blind dog eating the remains of another dog, and understand that the blind dog has been eating the other dog forever and they exist in their own pocket of time which is different from my own. I walk for a length of time somewhere (time is geographical not linear), between one second and eternity.

Find an old friend staring at his reflection in a muddy puddle. He does not look up. Another opens the door and puts a finger to his lips because the baby is sleeping.

I attempt to write my new address so we can stay in touch but ink does not exist anymore. Ink never existed.

The sun sets in the east.

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Untitled by Malene Lauritsen

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UNSpoken Unspoken for, like the want that has no need outspoken as a word that does not feed unbroken as the egg that has no shell unformed like the thought that rings no bell unwanted as if I was a box of garbage unfathomed by the will to ravage outlasting the wish to succumb Unspoken like Berlin offering scum unrequired by the need to please unfitted to be part of the human sea unleashed by hate that is not mine outwitted by the day that loves to shine Unspoken like the words of love that found no heaven below or above.

by Richard Schemmerer

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Editors Managing Editor, Layout Editor Mary Vlasuk has called Berlin her home since 2009. Driven by her admiration for the arts and business saavy ways she helped found Berlin Spoken Word in 2015 and continues to run the weekly open mic night.

Mary is currently studying Social Work at Alice-Salomon Hochschule in Berlin and is commited to supporting an active, open and aware society for social change and justice.

Executive Editor, Layout Editor Beulah Kirupa grew up in Australia. While taking a career break in 2012 she travelled around Europe, a trip that would put her on a path that would eventually lead to her sitting in a Berlin basement in early 2016, listening to people sharing their beautiful words. Inspired she became involved with the Berlin Spoken Word family and their affiliated magazine.

Project Manager, Content Editor Naniso Tswai is a Berlin-based South African author. His work is strongly embedded in broader issues of justice and peace, particularly as these relate to human rights and identity. In the past few years his focus has gradually shifted from academic writing to fictional writing - this has come in the form of short stories and novels. He is interested in creating platforms which both celebrate and utilise the potential collaboration of art and politics.

Content Editor Selene Ross is an artist and writer from California. After living in a basement in West Berlin for a year and working with several writer and activist groups around the city, she is headed back to the States for the next chapter.

Layout Editor Paul Miller has spent the last 4 years perfecting the art of being a Berlin hipster. Originally hailing from London, he was drawn to Berlin by a fascination for creativity and a desire to learn what it is that drives people to express themselves. He currently studies Social work with an emphasis on bringing together community and self empowerment.

Special thanks to Digne Glatzel and Martha Willey

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