Marcus Berkner Jewelry

2016-04-09T17:10:00.001-07:00

Coalescing shapes reappear
Briefly, without words
Filling quiet moments.
The little boy who lost his soul
casts a faint shadow on the ground.

2015-07-29T22:47:00.000-07:00

As Peter the squirrel walked toward the male human's garden, he knew what he was about to do was wrong; it might even get him killed.

It was too late to change his mind, his eyes would not focus on anything but the precious vegetables; the ones the male human so tenderly worshiped. Peter ducked under the small barrier fence, walked through the aging turnips wilting in the sun and approached the tall, manicured tomato plants; swollen, red fruit hung rich and heavy on the vines. Peter stood at the side of the plant for a moment, admiring the sculpted handiwork of the male human. Peter then began tearing the fruit from the vine, pulling each tomato off in the most destructive way, ripping the fruit apart and throwing it's red, bleeding carcass onto the brown earth. One tomato for ever humiliation heaped upon him over the years from the male human; one for every bark and scare from the male human's wicked dog, for the constant fear, the loss, for every time he had sat trembling from a near-miss. Peter tore and ripped, slinging the vile fruit in a blind rage; the rage no longer needed the catalyst of his flawed reasoning, simply rage and fear and anger and humiliation.

At some point, perhaps for lack of eligible fruit, or forgetting exactly why he started, Peter the squirrel began to regain a bit of his sense -- sufficient composure to exit the garden, travel back up his hometree, glance down at the carnage and enter his house. Peter laid down on his cot, pulled the flannel sheets over his head and slept for a very long time.

2015-07-29T22:46:00.001-07:00

The first time I watched Fried Green Tomatoes, yes I've seen it more than once, it was the scenery that struck me the most. The outside shots, at least, were filmed in my old stomping grounds. There is one location in the film, a river that is flattened out and spills over a dam, causeway? Not sure what its purpose is, but it is an odd sight, then and now. I remember the place vividly from my childhood. When you walk across, one side to the other, the entire river spilling evenly over the top, you get the sense that you are alternately walking on water or falling sideways along with the water onto the rocks below. Heaven and hell. Death and salvation.

Recently, I started watching another show filmed in Georgia. Lo and behold, another body of water from my past, perhaps an even more obscure one at that. The stream has, or at least had, a unique ecosystem. It flows primarily through gorges cut into stone so it was not as friendly to the mud loving varieties of fish swimming around the Peach State. Usually, when you have a body of water in Georgia, it fills with all sorts of fish, cannot keep them out. This stream with its smooth pockets of clear water was home to only one kind of fish - a lanky, strong perch I've never seen anywhere else.

In the movies, both places looked exactly as I remember them, every detail. Heaven and hell. Death and salvation.

2015-07-29T22:45:00.001-07:00

Authorities confirm that sometime around 11AM on a sleepy West Coast street, nothing particularly interesting happened. Eyewitnesses report seeing veggies growing, weeds growing more and a large, unruly dog yipping for waffle last bite.

2015-07-29T22:44:00.002-07:00

we were young and brave beings
reeking of desire

we held youth in our right hand
immortality in our left

death cowered before us
an impotent shell

we were the first generation
we were the last

2015-07-29T22:43:00.003-07:00

"I must still be dreaming," thought Peter the squirrel, "What a ruckus!"

"No I'm not dreaming," pinching himself on the ribs, "what could be causing all this noise?" he thought.

Peter threw back his burlap bed sheet and walked over to the small round window facing the WolfAndMan garden. At this very early hour, and to his surprise, everyone that he knew was out near the garden; all the village people, the WolfAndMan, night creatures, day creatures, flying creatures, even the scurrying creatures were bravely defying the encroaching sun. No one seemed to be afraid of anything, not even fearful of the more menacing creatures in the crowd. What's more, they were all dancing and whooping like they just didn't care. Even Garden Snail who, on principle, never danced was dancing; he didn't even dance at that mandatory dance thing last year, which turned out to be a horrible mess; he was sentenced to seven days jail but enjoyed it so much that he refused to leave, which is also illegal and punishable by seven days jail... well you can see what a mess. Yes Garden Snail was dancing, even leading the dance with some crude song about a sailor's wife. He did not even seem to notice that WolfAndMan's wife had resorted to cartwheels and that he was standing within the general trajectory.

"Has the world gone mad?" Peter thought watching several village people heartily stomping on his buried walnut patch, "ack... there goes my nuts."

"Oh... so you better not wink at the sailor's wife!" Garden Snail bellowed.

2015-07-29T22:42:00.002-07:00

Lap lap lap, the river keeps time against our craft, pulling us through the dense forest. Lap lap, lap, it strokes the muddy banks on either side of us, moving earth in and out of the reddish-brown artery. On this third day of our journey, just past the sun's apex, we round a bend in the river. The forest darkens, the sounds of the river become muted. Our guide, crouching at the rear of our raft, moves us close to the bank on the left, places his right hand on his throat, closes his eyes and produces a long, deep guttural sound. Within a few seconds we hear several creatures in the forest responding with the same unhuman sound. Our guide tells us that we are now entering the Other.

In less than an hour, we witness the first creatures belonging to this strange place.

2015-07-29T22:41:00.003-07:00

they had gathered for the great war...

the badasses now squatting
on the ground like scolded children

the peacekeepers in purple nitrile
laying hands on the dead

pondering how far from
sunday with the kids

the condors circling above
taking us one step closer

2015-07-29T22:40:00.002-07:00

All flights are canceled
till the fog lifts and the sun
remembers its line.

2015-07-29T22:39:00.002-07:00

no i cannot ignore
that bottomless space
that was you and i
and everyone else
when we performed
the unthinkable
held and feared
without reconciliation

was it yesterday
or forever ago

2015-02-27T13:05:00.002-08:00

Sheila was having a better than average day. She'd felt well enough to locate Tramps leash and take him for a walk.
As she stood on the side of the field, one among the long evening shadows, everything stationary was stationary and pretty much where the universe had put it. She could not shake the feeling, however, that without Substance D, she was drinking the pastoral scene out of a stale paper cup.

2015-02-09T20:46:00.002-08:00

This was where the strange words spoken by madmen in faraway places were kept. They were stored in dusty archives of tandeta, whispered into matchboxes and placed in meticulously labeled wooden drawers. Lost words with and without meaning.

2015-01-30T16:11:00.002-08:00

Jay was kneeling down beside an old car in Mark's driveway. He had a can of Armor All in one hand and an old cloth in the other. He was rubbing the liquid into the ashy-gray bumper.

Mark came out of the house and stood at a slant behind Jay. He watched silently for a bit.

"Man I've never, our whole life, known you to wash your own car," he said, "and here you are wasting good Armor All on this piece of junk."

Jay kept coaxing the oil into the bumper. It was now turning a splotchy, but darker color.

"I remember this black plastic bumper from when we were kids," Jay said, "your brother used to park it here or over on A Street when he was dating Carol. It always looked wet, even in the hot sun. Almost looked alive."

Mark watched Jay a while longer, made a clicking noise, then went back into the house.

2014-11-30T20:26:00.001-08:00

death is male
boats are gentle and kind
and lust, what is its nature?

2014-10-28T12:16:00.003-07:00

these are the words
these are the secret words
held deep underground quivering ember glowing
with key lost in youth

words that flicker in candlelight
whispered frighteningly and apologetically
at the end of prayers

gasping and wheezing unholy words
that rise from deathbeds
upon a world unbreakable and broken

these are the words that hang
in clouds on winter walks
retold in dimly lit forests for eternity

2014-10-23T20:03:00.002-07:00

"Give my clan more time to adjust," said the Dwarf Lord.
"From a a tod I learned to drop your sort on sight, now I don't pull axe when I hear Elfchatter. This is a start."

2014-09-25T16:31:00.002-07:00

Dustbunny limped down the street where Titmouse lived. He came to a stop in front of her apartment. Two little girls were sitting on the cement steps in front of her apartment. Both looked down at his weak leg, one whispered to the other and they both giggled. Securely holding on to the rail, Dustbunny executed the painful and embarrassing climb up to Titmouse's front door and rang the bell.
He could hear Titmouse coming to the door.
"Hi," she said, a little out of breath.

"Hey... I haven't heard from you in a while so I thought I would walk over and see how you are doing."
"I'm fine," replied Titmouse, "I've kinda been busy."
"Would you like to go get an ice cream or something?" Dustbunny shifted weight onto his bad leg for a moment. He could hear the little girls giggling again. He flushed.
"Yeah. Let me get ready, I'll be right out." Titmouse left Dustbunny with the porch, the handrail, his bad leg and the giggling girls.
She came back to the door quickly, however, with a sweater draped over her arm. She took Dustbunny's hand softly in hers, shooed the girls from off the porch and they walked slowly down to the road.

2014-09-25T13:57:00.004-07:00

This evening every type of cloud was
thinly spread in the Autumn orange haze.
The field, with wet and closing womb
lamented it's eternal lord and sun
falling incrementally from the sky
and the wind and the rain
erased every line
I had carved in the soil.

2014-08-19T15:54:00.000-07:00

Dustbunny spent the idle, late summer evening smoking opium from a small wooden pipe, the lazy, gray-white smoke wafting over the already still hive within his head. His thoughts remained unchanged, frozen from progress or decay. Progressive decay.

Decay for progress, or the soft lack of it. Or something. Or as he recalled, nothing. Curling rising. Lift shift dissipate.

The universe resized itself to fit only the contents of his one room cottage. Basking in the half-space of things, the marching of time also became lost in thoughts.

But then he remembered his pipe and remembered not remembering and the things he chose not to remember came back sweetly and gently, cushioned and without malice -- each thought in its time, lifted from the hive within his mind, dancing unthreateningly in the smoke filled space that was he and that he occupied.

2014-07-29T18:21:00.004-07:00

Ran into an old friend in a dream Friday night. Haven't seen him since my late teens. He is the kind of guy that shows up too often in thoughts and dreams, as if the remembrance of him is a metaphor of some sort. He looked troubled in the dream and not able to gather the fragments of his life between when we lost touch in our teens and Friday night. Old and tired, he spoke a forgotten phrase, a dream words that never copy to the page quite right.

I replied something in the nature of, 'It will be OK', again in dreamspeak, where a single word can expand to near infinity.

He calmed, faded, then disappeared. I woke up to a new feeling that with a bit of sorting, all might be OK.

2014-07-27T17:52:00.002-07:00

Peter the squirrel woke up more peaceful than he had been in a long time. He slowly fell out of the night's last dream, some concoction from his imaginings of Scandinavia and its fauna. He untangled himself from his pet wolf, sat on the side of the bed and bathed in the cool-orange glow of his den.

No yesterday, no tomorrow.

His withered paw did not bother him as it usually does in the morning. It was there, but it did not seem to matter that much, so pleasant was his mood.

2014-07-16T17:34:00.002-07:00

There is a rift under my workshop desk which I call the Trader. I do not know if it has shape and form, as I have never actually seen it. I am only aware of its existence through its effect on small solid objects that are accidentally dropped near it. Often, when I drop an jewelry piece under my desk, it disappears -- hours of searching will not reveal its whereabouts -- fallen through the rift into to some Other Place.

This is not the most inexplicable behavior of the rift, as it could easily be argued that I am just terrible at finding lost items. There is a stranger behavior that I attribute to the rift which I think happens too often to be coincidence. When Trader accepts a new 'offering', it then redeposits a long lost piece dropped under the desk in exchange, often placing it in the most obvious, front and center, easy to find location. The rediscovered item is usually a years-ago dropped jewelry item that I searched for in vain before accepting it was probably gone forever.

I have crawled under the large bench many times in search of unfinished pieces of jewelry or tools. The rift has never accepted me as an offering, at least not that I have noticed. Maybe it takes time to recharge, having too recently gobbled up a half-finished ring or other trinket? If the Trader is large enough for a person to fit into or through, I think I would like to visit the Land of Lost Items. If I was accepted, I wonder what it would replace me with? And with what might I be redeemed?

2014-06-24T18:57:00.002-07:00

"So, can the universe itself be thought of as merciful?" I then asked the garden snail.

"I will never understand why humans insist on looking beyond themselves when asking such questions" she replied, "like... like detached, 'intellectual' bystanders observing some great experiment."

2014-06-15T19:43:00.002-07:00

i cannot shake this
illogical thought that
some day chaos
will align revealing
that which whispers through
the darkest and most
frightening glass shattering
filling the empty spaces
with what was always present'

2014-05-18T18:41:00.002-07:00

'always' promise frozen tender
moments whispering 'remember me'
as they fade away leaving
gentle songs and mockingbirds
that ring corridors of moonlit
shadows that once shone
as the sun but soon are merely
tiny breaths that move curtains
among our inner thoughts
swirl around with scents of summer
far off places where we used to dance
scattered winds we try to hold
but find ourself embracing
half forgotten sweetly embellished
frozen tender moments
whispering 'remember me'