March 8, 2015

POETRY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRYSTAL BERCHE "NEVER FORGOTTEN, MOLDING, THE LAST GOODBYE, WE RACE, TRIPPING"

Chrystal dabbles, lots, and somewhere in those dabbles blossoms ideas that take shape into images. Many of her current pieces of artwork start out as three minute gesture drawings and eventually get paired with still life photography and a lot of playing in Photoshop. She loves to take pictures, especially out in the woods, where she can sit on a rock or a log and wait quietly, jotting notes for stories until something happens by. A free spirit, Chrystal digs in dirt, dances in rain and chases storms, all at the whims of her muses.



Never Forgotten


 
Roll tide roll
Like a song on repeat
Filling the corners of every room
Seeping into drywall pores
And the cracks between wallpaper strips
The melody an echo of wood
Decades after the first scratchy notes
Drifted on whisky rough voice
Through polished phonograph
Vinyl is an ancient word now
Like ten-penny and sorghum
Only old ears would understand
The desperate tempo that can’t be captured
In picture perfect surround sound
How there’s a mood and feeling to those scratchy tones
Where hearts were poured out in tones of longing
And language that wouldn’t make a harlot blush
Where words earned weight and meaning
Instead of being hurled like bullets
Inciting riots the way the legends inciting love
Reverberation doesn’t have to mean screaming hate
The loudest isn’t always the strongest
But the strongest word is the one never forgotten



Molding


I’ve watched you more than half my life
Knowing I might never be worthy
Had little to offer you really
Save for grease beneath my fingernails
And a mind for how things go together
You use thirty dollar words and skip between exhibits
Talking about light and shadows
And how some guy with a name I don’t recognize
Used expressionism with renaissance overtones
I can’t picture in my mind what you mean
Any more than you could hand me
the seven and three-quarters wrench when I ask for it
we’re two worlds that rub seams
sparks flying as we dance this crazy dance of words
misunderstandings build houses of cards
not homes filled with warmth and love
and love is what I’ve felt for you forever
struggling to redefine me to fit you
to figure out the difference between a Picasso and a Rembrandt
in ways you’ve never tried to learn the difference
between Cameros and Firebirds
cringing when you greet me with a haughty tone
on those days when you’re not done
reducing me to the guy who fixes your Audi
not the guy who holds you in his arms
in those moments I see myself through their eyes
grungy and grasping for something
I shouldn’t dare sully with my touch
Wouldn’t know that word either, if you hadn’t used it
When I smudged motor oil on your mohair sweater
The horror in your eyes is a bitter memory
As is the echo of my unaccepted apology





The Last Goodbye

Twisting and narrow, the road weaves
Past fields where we once rode our horses
Rivers where we learned to fly fish
Remember the night you grabbed my hand
Rushing headlong down a dirt path
Barefoot and kicking up dust
just to watch a mare give birth in the moonlight
remember the way your eyes lit up
when that slick gray colt slid into the grass
almost mystical when the moonbeams hit him
and your eyes, so blue, glowed when they met mine
now you refuse to look at me
can’t raise your gaze from the red dirt road
one hand on the metallic blue door
as you’re telling me it’s over
how can something so timeless end
you and me, splashing in the mud when we were three
riding dirtbikes on Rockaway hill
Driving twenty miles to see a drive-in movie
Just so we could sit with the top down beneath the stars
Remember the night I slipped my ring on your finger
And swore my love would never die
That you were etched in my blood, my bones, my soul
More me than I could ever truly be
There was never a moment when I didn’t know you were mine
I was yours and that’s the way the universe made it
So who are you to unmake the cosmos?
This can’t be the end, the last goodbye
We’ve never said goodbye before
Even in parting we knew the minutes
The hours before we’d see each other again
Now I’m left here watching dust as you roar on up the road
And I can hear the music blaring as you go
Racing towards the sunset, carrying my love with you as you run
Can’t you see we were never meant to drive this road alone?




We Race

We race
Flashing our taillights at the town
A Morris code of fuck you
To every judgmental biddy who ever
Thumbed her nose at your black clothes
Or my dog collar necklace
Freedom is a long stretch of highway
The rumbling purr of a well-tuned engine
The scream of guitars crashing from the radio
Nights when we can pretend for just a little while
That this fleeting escape was perminant 



Tripping


We trip
   Down stairs
      Over scales of memory
         Past songs we’ve neglected
            Past notes we’ve ignored
               Losing relationships in dust
                  Blinded by ambitions
                     Turning away from challenges
                        Racing one another to the door

Empty handed we arrive
Panting, soul shredded
Bones picked clean
Ragged beggars in holy worn out shoes
We open our mouths
Find we arrived without even the words
That beast propelled us to hurl ourselves
Into madcap, mad dash race
The destruction of ourselves, time, each other
All in the name of something we’ve forgotten
By the time we arrived
                                            So we trudge miserably
                                      Back down cracked staircases    
                                Into choking darkness, bitter ash
                          Acrid taste of defeat on our tongues
                    Curled like flames in our bellies
              Scorching us from the inside out
        Making mockery of everything wonderful
    We ever hoped to believe

Until we’re left with nothing


PHOTO GALLERY 

...

~Chrystal Berche

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