Kristiana Roemer

Stranger

Be the stranger.
Uphold the sparkle of the first glance.
Be undefined.
To be known and be loved has a slim chance.
 

The things familiar make me want to move.
Comfortable habit makes me feel tired, and fooled.
Being more or less awkward is my thing.
The common reaction — not worth mentioning.
 

Nevertheless, I don’t have a choice.
I never meant to choose my own voice.
Now — standing out of the crowd is my typical zone.
Not fitting in is my familiar home.
Giving each corner just a brief touch.
Leave a small print on each creature; not too much.

But the nervosa from being on my own
drives me weary from the inside out.
It’s the engine that pushes me, yet tires me out.
My cozy nest merely a silent deep sleep.
My tranquil home merely a hole to which I creep
when the risk of my face, the one cut up and bruised,
to be revealed is too great. It would only confuse.

Kristiana Roemer
2014

Home is where the hurt is

Sending a silent hymn
to a cavern still haunted.
An old distorted kinship
keeps the child in its crib,
and lets it weep; keeps it lit 
with a dream. So solemnly dim.

Time to gather the nest
of memories ruefully taunted
and finally lay it in an alley.
What a thrill of consolation
when a small history has died.
A victory over a nation
only you carry inside.

Kristiana Roemer
2016

Bury My Heart

Bury my heart

It refuses to die

Bury it quickly

before it can ask why!

Bury it deep

No – even deeper

Let its bloody stream

slowly seep deeper

each distraught scream

let it creep deeper

and with it, my heart’s dreams –

let the depth be their keeper

​

Until dream by dream

they can all pass me by

But my heart will be silent

It won’t ask me “Why?!”

for down in the moist,

in the warm, in the soft,

in the smooth and the massive,

in darkness

it lies

​

Bury my heart

It is easier when dead

But give it a grave

it deserves a warm bed

It’s bound to weep

and will keep weeping

down in the deep

while pathetically beating.

It will meekly weep

until it is sleeping –

one last haunting beat

before it curls up to sleep.

​

And its soulful flutter

will eventually freeze.

Then that powerless heart

will no longer seize

all of my intentions,

my mind, and my functions,

(my desire for vengeance) –

but grant my sentience

lethargic peace.

Kristiana Roemer
2013

Realitäts(ver)Lust

Ein seekranker Fisch.

Die Menschen sind Computer.

Programmierbar, installierbar.

Nichts ist Wirklichkeit,

nichts ist stets,

sondern alles bleibt anfechtbar.

Alles eine Frage der Auslegung,

der Idealisierung,

der Emotionsführung.

Die geglückte Konstellation

von Begebenheit,

Wortwechsel,

und Kondition.

Es ist die menschliche Natur.

Aber diese Banalität.

Diese Banalität

dieser Banalität –

so banal.

Ich greife in die Welt,

aber ich greife ins Leere.

Ich fasse keinen Halt.

Somit kehre

ich

in mich

hinein und verweile.

Blicke raus,

alles ein breiter bunt bemalter Nebelstreifen.

Eine Halluzination im eigenen Haus

in Endlosschleifen.

Kristiana Roemer
2015

In The Frame

In The Frame

Alone in this apartment

with the echoes of his breathing

with his books of wild imaginings.

Songs of secretive passions

for old familiar flavors.

I dive into the pages

I plunge into its soul

devoured by the messy tongues

of travel; thought; craving.

I lose the ground under my feet

and like a bolt, they shoot up into me

pumping my body from the inside out

throbbing my skin.

It’s a dance.

A mutation

into something completely new

that I have been all along.

The scenes still swim in my mind’s lake.

I was there -

He was lying sprawled out on the bed

floating in the bed frame

keeping the room centered.

The room’s bones firm and held tight

by his naked body pumping gravity.

Motionless silent power.

She stood in the doorway

leaning on the frame

her eyes fixed on him

looking out for every movement.

His seed still shyly creeping down her thighs

and dying in the spicy air.

Melting into the door frame

she became one with the frame

sipping vanilla ice cream off a spoon

she is digging from out of the box they bought together.

Time stood still.

Neither she nor he was breathing

but the lungs and groin of the house’s body –

they were rumbling.

The walls became liquid.

The air became hot and heavy.

And he fell into her pages

he sunk into her soul

devoured by messy tongues
of travel; thought and craving.

All the songs of secretive passions

for old familiar flavors

with her books of wild imaginings

with the echoes of her breathing.

Alone in this apartment.

Still Here

Still here. Recalling the sun
burning down the fire escape
where I’d sit, read and sip
my coffee. See your face
through the glass
writing that masterpiece
you so vividly long to encase
while my own mind is chasing
towards its own grounded space.

​

Still here. Beneath a hollow thud
of quiet amplitude.
It’s deafening,
remembering a world
in which I believed I wandered
only days before
upon arriving at your door.
You took me in
into a home you already owned
and life began to show me things
between the pages of your spirit.
Life’s little cravings and belongings
hidden among the artefacts of the room
which I longed to inherit
and silently melted into.

​

Still here. Gravely,
mourning the baby so precious
you pushed off the edge into nothingness.
In its absence I still hear its screams and cries
filled with heartaches and smiles
from that moment in time
when the tip of the vine
it climbed was cut down.
But, very likely,
that baby was only mine.

Yet,

still here. Vaguely,
I feel the force of a source far off
or merely a hint of what it was
for it is lessening with the tide.
A moment in time
I am to greet with gratitude
but it is threatening to leave me.
Has it already?
There’s a vicious solitude
crawling all around these new walls.
Once a pond of healthy soil
from which the seed’s been ripped out,
it is now smothering in a moor of bland acid.
I was unprepared for the drought
now to face where your edged voice continuously calls
and is reverberating from inside these damp halls.
Enjoy it while it lasted’
is something I well know.
We had something created.
Now I’m stuck in the heat.
Holding just a faint trace
of a world from days ago.

​

Still here — yet
I refuse to forget.
The sun was just rising
from behind your head,
letting its rays of fine thread
slither past the left side of your chin
and lace my thoughts with cohesiveness,
its incisive needles puncturing into my skin
and thawing upon the bed spread
we created for ourselves…

​

Two seagulls found on a burning cliff
to mate for the season
and take this moment once and for all
before they depart.
The female inhaled all the air
that she believed she could hold in her heart
for she knew this may well be a brisk piece of fine art
which beyond this one day
might keep them
still here
together in the fold
each, one tear apart.

Kristiana Roemer
2016

Prospect Park

Whispers in the night.
As they lay in the clearing,
she is being eaten alive.
Insects preying on her skin.
She’s to be freed at the same time
by a dream she carries within.
She forms it in the clouds
just beyond his face, revealing
a thick and heavy shroud.
Lost from the body it was concealing,
it disintegrates into flakes of dust
and rises up towards nothing.
Naked, she tries to humbly let go of his trust
and welcome all that this lust is becoming.
 

It was a fleeting few days
that felt like eternity.
Reunited with his ways,
a shadow hidden secretly
had appeared among these two lovers long parted
and found peace in a haven
for a time being. Truly, wholehearted-
-ly, she laughed and laughed
for the treasures she once gave him.
Unforgettable path
between reality and heaven,
so afloat and malcraft-
-ed, it would not eternally enslave them.

Now, the shroud disappearing,
she lies calm. Her dream is alive.
The child will survive.
The two merged in the clearing
inside the deep sky, she knows.
And her soul smiles and rests alone
with the young embryo.

Kristiana Roemer
2016

Virgin Soil

In the heart of the meadow
we said our goodbyes.
Our sun here had been gutted.
Our fruit here is dry.
No more life left, nor thought,
but the cue that it’s time.
So you plunged for your freedom.
First you jumped — 
Then I.

I awoke…
to a place of sweet, sad acid trips
A bustling oasis
Dreams licking their lips
Highs of vast stimulations
and a fierce solitude
Lost in bitter isolation
among shrill altered hues
Muffled grunts of the herd driven to the back row
along with the moths of our barren meadow.
 

I search you in the crowd
but you’ve fallen elsewhere.
And I, I must go on swimming
through this grand athmosphere.

We both found our theatrical paradise.
But beyond physical logic,
by fortunate ties,
I know we are bound.
In dream-state I know
that we have common ground.
 

I remember a place
a sere distant glow
not a touch
without sound

our meadow.

Kristiana Roemer
2014

Fragility

A utopian fragility that could withstand

the emersion of a world for two,

the tangent of two consciousnesses

allowing one foggy common land.

I’d been feeding off your minutes.

There was no more time for mine.

I expanded my cloud of existence.

You would not have it. It was not my time.

I was happy to be your guest.

I’ll let you execute the rest

alone, on your own.

You know what is best

for your next hour of journey.

A utopian fragility

so liquid as to morph and so sure as not to shatter

is what such bond would require.

I’ll remain your desire

right where you keep me:

on the shelf in your future selves’ antique store.

Value me and sell me for

the price you see fit.

(Do I hang some minutes more?)

You’ll cherish me for the minutes

you feed me over  time.

And I, I’ll have the space, enough

to guard both yours and mine.

Thank you, little diamond.

Go and sparkle as you would.

Remove the dust,

brush off the soot.

Leave me at the coffee table

of some strange nearby café,

out of the way

of your mind’s seas

you so truly

dream to rule.

I’ll linger close. –

the scent of coffee-breath kissing your nose,

my fingers’ tips’ prints on the keys and floors.

Scattered in my own mind’s walls

will be your phantom, still, that calls

me, I’ll come to assist at your social endeavors.

I’ll come speak a toast

and blow you a kiss

whenever it feels clever

to you. Our souls are not limitless.

​

You’ve set your borders.

The night I asked for a little more

of my minutes in our time

those borders of yours

slammed shut and

time stood still.

Nothing’s there to make undone.

I have a voice.

Did you have a choice?

I won’t know.

Exploring a new open sea

that I’ve now fell upon,

you’ve decided to sail on

to where you consider yourself free.

I was drunk on the bubble.

No sip left for me now.

I’ll see you on our dates.

They’ll be sweet

and banal;

charmingly incomplete.

What more to hope for
than to use today’s time

for more things to explore

for my own antique store.

You’ve closed your door.

But if one day you can open it

you’ll find me on the step.

Or at least a small echo

in the case that I have left.

An echo more grown up,

matured on the hot cement.

Once born in a garden of fleeting dreams

it has learned to accept

to sew up its own seams.

When you open the door,

you’ll hear it ring a smile,

a kiss,

holistic and worth-while.

It’s a shame,

so heart-wrenching,

to know,

no tears will be drenching
our eyes. No,

we’ll be content.

Kristiana Roemer
2016

The Bell

You shall be it

My serene space

My mental cave

Be the ward my sickness needs

but in which I move freely.

I’ve had a love, a plenty a few loves

but if our psyches will pay a cost

then you be the beast’s institution.

I choose you, Paris, dove

You, I will love

until the day that I am well

and can return and never tell

that here my soul had rung alarm;

but rather watch with wiser charm

the bell has throttled its walls so to crack.

The beast is gone.

​

And now, from dust to dust

on softest touch

to snuggle in united embrace

we split, too, to

millions

become one

silently falling past and down

to graze the ground

of the home we loved.

​

We groaned and inhaled

to the extent of our minds to rise

too far above our woven brains.

So be it to us to be held down

there on the ground

‘til blown apart

as dust we lie

the belle and I.

Kristiana Roemer
2015

Run

On the chase

Constantly running after something

Out of breathe

Pounding down my feet

Stomping deep into the dirt

'Til my heart thumps a steady beat

to maintain the pace

Caught a trace?

Perhaps I'll never reach what I am searching

In any case

it feels good to run

Clutching hard onto the breeze

clamming my way through the gum

into the next phase

In a craze -

Crashing down a liquid road of guessing

A million ways

merged inside the heat

What was and will be are the same -

There’s no difference there to seek

One thick, boiling haze

Some random place

Call it what you want - except for nothing

So definitely

see a face

This is just the young beginning

Kristiana Roemer
2016

Between Normalities

The lines are blurring.

I’m caught between.

No longer do I know how to decipher.

Or was I not able to from the beginning?

The lines are thinning.

The blur grows wider

until what is I cannot see

and patterns are not reoccurring

What is gold

and what is dust?

Is it the dust that I must chase?

Anticipate, hallucinate

the simmering rush

of growing old.

The questions that I had once asked –

I’ve laid them with the moths.

Judgments are not mine to make.

I choose to drown them in the lake

of many million trails of thought.

For none of those I thought I caught

decoded truth from cause

or displayed how to be masked.

Kristiana Roemer
2015

Das Nebenzimmer

Im Nebenzimmer höre ich dich atmen.

Im Nebenzimmer spüre ich dich lauschen.

So gehe ich in die andere Richtung,

ins Arbeitszimmer,

und setze mich an meinen Schreibtisch.

Der Stuhl ist noch warm.

Ich kann mich nicht konzentrieren…

zurück in die Küche für eine Tasse Tee.

Es huscht hinter mir.

Ich rieche deinen Dunst.

Es ist stickig und der Raum wird eng,

hier ist eine Menge geschehen.

Im Nebenzimmer höre ich dich scheu herumlungern.

Im Nebenzimmer bebt deine Hitze.

So entscheide ich mich, mich schlafen zu legen.

Raus aus diese Welt - hinein in eine andere.

Weg von dir!

Ich gehe ins Schlafzimmer und lege mich ins Bett.

Du stehst hinter der geschlossenen Tür.

Ich habe alle Vorhänge zugezogen,

aber du findest einen Spalt, um hineinzuspähen.

Ohrstöpsel rein, Augen zu, hinein ins dumpfe Schwarze.

Langsam wird es unter der Decke wärmer.

Du hast dich endlich herangetraut.

Du kommst immer näher

verlierst immer mehr an deiner Scheu

und nimmst mich vorsichtig in deinen Arm.

Mir wird rundherum wohlig warm

und ich will vor Erdrückung meine Tränen kullern lassen.

Du drückst sie aus mir heraus,

du quillst alles in mir heraus

und ich schluchze leise

vor dieser Leerung und Erstickung meines Körpers.

Langsam gewinnt das kuschelig-warme Schwarze

und ich schwebe davon…

Ich wache auf, schweißbedeckt!

Du hast dich in der Nacht in deiner vollen Größe

zu mir unter meine Decke herangekrochen!

Mir ist so heiß...

Du hast mich innig umschlungen.

Ich schluchze nicht mehr.

Du hast mich in deiner fürsorglichen Umarmung

sorgfältig fest eingepackt.

Mit geschlossenen Augen ist es halb so schlimm.

Die Unbeweglichkeit ist fast tröstlich.

Du wirkst gar nicht wie ein Übeltäter.

Du passt bloß nicht in diese Welt hinein.

Aber ich,

ich muss in dieser Welt agieren.

Ich muss agieren!

Sofort !

Endlich finde ich die Kraft.

Ich reiße meine Augen auf,

zwinge ihren Blick gegen das hereinstrahlende brennende Sonnenlicht

und auf die glitzernden Dachdielen der Nachbarhäuser.

Du zuckst ein wenig, überrascht,

und lockerst deine Umschlingung.

Ich nutze die Gelegenheit

und schwinge mich aus der höllischen Hitze heraus.

Schnell, an die Kaffeemaschine!

Das Koffein prescht in mein Gehirn!

In die Dusche!!

Das Wasser gießt den Schweiß in den Abfluss und füllt meine Poren.

Ran ans Fenster!!!

Die Tagesluft umarmt mich.

Ich atme teif ein…

Ich erinnere mich, wo ich hier bin.

Ich erinnere mich, dass ich am gestrigen Tage auch hier war

und dass ich Gedanken und Vorhaben hatte.

Ich fühle mich kiloweise leichter.

Ich bin dir entflohen, denn du,

vom Tageslicht geschwächt,

hast dich stumm verkrochen.

Im Nebenzimmer höre ich dich atmen.

Und warten.

Kristiana Roemer
2016

Faders

The worst part is

You didn’t tear

You didn’t rip

You didn’t yank

my throbbing muscle into strips

of falling blood clots

But you let me fade away

Let me dissipate into space

My memories wearing thin

My mind failing my conviction

Another layer peeled each day

Clearing up one more existence

Clearing the way for perfect shots

To blow the cells of a tired spirit

And make them fly, fly, fly

Jump, crackle, sway

Dance!

Dance!

Dance!

A spasmatic festival of gloria

Until morphed into the dusty pollution

Sucked up into a black hole

Swallowed

Kristiana Roemer
2015

Little World

Waking up to my demise

It was a well-scripted movie.

Waking up to beneath his disguise

the one with which he’d accrue me.

Waking up in whole-gutted despise

towards the life that’s supposed to pursue me.

All dolled up in leeches
deep clean-cut gold breaches

for a life that needs me. –

To feel worthy?

Waking up to "go follow",

but I don't.

I hear the others holler,

I won’t. Instead,

I wake up

To my own violated mind.

To heed it had been my only duty.

I inhale its kind words,

stringed with a demon’s curse;

but they say,

good things stay

for better or for worse. –

And this mind's always stuck with me truly.

The demise of a youngster

calls the rise of an elder –

so wise so not to fret

over Little World's peril;

so tired so not to let

her little fits impel her.

Waking up to not caring
to ever defeat.

Let the damn baby cry;
make it loud, her deceit!

We’ve all been deceit –
through her! So, quiet!

"World, give us a break.

Set us free from your trial.

Go and scream in a cavern

or some cave to yourself

until you feel you have found

a place deep deep down

to help. Don’t cry

to us, World.

Don't taunt us critters.

Our fragility’s high,

don’t cause more to splinter.

Little World, you baby girl,

so confused and so lost

from your purpose and cause.

Then, now – stop the fuss!

And the cry, will you! Hush!

Even you, you can rise

to wiser beauty and splendor.

Wake up, Little World,

breathe deep and sit.

Don’t promise me passion,

glory, and all that shit.

You have nothing at all –

only love to give." (Thank you)

Close my eyes, to the serenity of our own minds.

Close my eyes, to his smile I see from far off behind.

Close my eyes, to the passions he fused with mine.

Close my eyes, to his disinterest in pursuing – this time.

Waking up, to a beautifully laid out suicide.

"Wake from the madness, World!

Breathe deep. Calmly sit.

World, awake from the illusion

you carry since birth.

Crashing into this well-defined hazardous pit,

I know it did hurt. I know

you might hurt even more

when the time comes to split."

Life on Earth has been good;

life on Earth has been barred.

"Forget the madness, World,

don’t try so hard.

Give us your love.

Give us your beauty."

That’s all we are
truly

in need of.

Kristiana Roemer
2016

Seelensprung

Dein Fenster ist weg. Irgendwo dort in der kühlen Weite.

Dein Haus auf dem Felsen, wo ich mich dir vereinte,

verliert sich hinter den nebeligen Wolken.

Ich fühle es gehen –

aber sanft ein stählerner Faden sich um mich legen.

mit dem dumpfen Schlag dieser betäubenden Stille.

Jetzt spannt es sich fester

und ich halte kurz inne.

Mir wird klar,

sein Zug wird mich ewig verfolgen

bis ich endlich begreife

und folge dem Fluss.

Und mich endlich aufspüre.

Mein Wesen, meine Lust.

Es ist was ich tun muss

mich mit diesem Fluss voll und gänzlich erfüllen.

Und jetzt, entschlossen ihm weiter zu folgen,

kann ich endlich hoffen,

am Ende des Weges wieder in deinen Hafen zu rollen,

um mich noch einmal mit deinem Sein zu umhüllen

und so zu tun als könnten sich Seinsarten vereinen,

auch wenn wir sie doch nur miteinander teilen,

dort - auf unseren gelassenen Wellen –,

um schließlich an deinem Fels

in tausend Perlen zu zerschellen.

Kristiana Roemer
2014