Turquoise Contemplation

Ich hatte mal ne türkise Vase - Once I had a turquoise vase 38 x 28 cm

Many years ago - more than 30 for sure - I visited the relatives of my friend Alan and his mother had a red flower infront of a turquoise painting. I never forgot that color combination. I loved it.

So, Alan, this is to you!

CONTEMPLATION

                                    If you look long enough into the abyss

                                    the abyss just might look back.

                                                                  Friedrich Nietzsche                                              

On a good day when I

look at a work of art

I experience a state of mind

I call ecstatic contemplation.

I am lifted up to a pleasant mountain

pavilion fluffed with scented cushions

and here’s a water pipe, thank you so much, loaded 

with a cutting-edge substance, and the tip

of this pipe, connected to my mouth, 

is held in place there by a half-naked girl

whose twin sister is down at the other end

giving me, shall we say, a lovely foot massage?

But no, I don’t think that’s what art does;

I think that’s what middle-age does.

Otherwise multitudes of robust

consumers upon whom our economic  

health depends would abandon shopping malls

and theme parks and KFCs and we would have

to wait hours to get into the Dallas-Ft. Worth

Museum of Fine Arts on a Monday evening,

the Cowboys playing the 49ers at home to empty seats.

We would have to book the Prado, the Uffizi

years in advance. Ecstatic contemplation

is an out of body experience, and

there’s a hidden risk to self-esteem.

It’s not meant to be easy. First,

you stand back and wait for a Russian aesthete

to cell phone photograph his hot-panted

friend teetering on her spike-heeled tight-

rope athwart the “Primavera,” say, or a

little garden scene by Leonardo as if it

were a new Jag or Porsche. Then, after

they depart, you find yourself, if all goes well,

cut off, out of the world, lost in a dream

of perfect skin—those Italian masters were

notorious voluptuaries, and even Mary, virgin mother  

of God, looks hot—shimmering silks and fabrics    

in intricate golden lit folds and creases. If you stand   

there long enough the picture waking from its

own dream will notice it’s being noticed

and start to contemplate you; vaguely androgynous   

angels with rainbow wings will take you in   

if none too ecstatically, and it’s like that line

in the Rilke poem: You Must Change Your

Life the Archaic Torso says to the Great Poet, i.e., thou art

a dud compared to me, a slob, and my maker wouldn’t waste

five minutes of his valuable time rendering you—

or, as a certain king once put it, “it’s now or 

never,” so there’s no time to waste.

Omar Faruk Tekbilek - Ayasofya

Lies and Deception

Rot fängt Grün - Red catches Green 48,5 x 33 cm

DECEPTION

It can’t hurt if I consume

one less muffin for breakfast

tomorrow, drink my coffee black,

no sugar, no cream, then go

jogging in the sultry afternoon

heat, really uncomfortable, steam

rising off my hair. And I believe

it. One more beer this evening

and I’ll go without tomorrow, have

a beer-less day, booze-free. I swear. All right

just one last grappa to “aid digestion.”

And I believe that too. Which is good

since, as evolutionary biologists insist,

that sneaky, twisting, brutally rank

back pathway that leads you past

the village midden and place of public execution—

i.e., the road to effective deception—

is one of self-deception. Is deceit, then,  

the key to human success? Yes, if you don’t get

caught or, even better, catch yourself.  

At twelve or thirteen I convinced myself that

I was a vampire and my seventeen year old

math tutor was so entranced by my self-belief

that she threw her head back and allowed me

to gnaw on her plump throat. Soon we

believed that she might

also be a vamp and before long

were celebrating festivals

of Transylvanian folklore. Then mom

sent her home early one day when

the teeth marks had become too obvious, too

purple. I suggested, and she

rejected, turtlenecks. I realize now

that other needs were being met—

better tip-toe around that one,

we might start looking for a victim

where none was. Or am I

deceiving myself about that

too? Confusing, which is pretty much a

given, just as being alive makes us victims

of too many events, aftermaths, detox talk

downs, two, three, four in the morning

piss calls, and other anxiety attacks. President

Clinton did not have sex with that   

woman (a pause for breath, a cheer for chutzpa!) Monica Saywhatsky.

I do believe he believed himself. He is a lawyer

after all and, as we know, the legally trained mind can make 

ultra-fine distinctions out of the most blatant bullshit—

“Is a blow job sex? Nah, I don’t think so.” —it can’t help itself.   

“The Devil made me do it,” a sit-com character used to say on TV.

O Satan, thou prince of deceivers, who made you “do it?”

 

 Henry Rollins Band - Liar

Caught in the Middle

Gefangen - Caught 23,5 x 29,5 cm

ON A VISIT OF POPE BENEDICT TO BERLIN

What about those Renaissance popes,

God bless ‘em, Borgias and Medici, and Julius 2,

the “warrior” pope, tormentor of Buonarroti,

leading his armies into the field? Think of mistresses,

catamites, long stretches of picturesque corruption.

So along came the last Pope with his grim looking

worried entourage of dark suits in sunglasses

with things in their ears, and even if

the Bishop of Rome is

unable to put an infantry division in the field

anymore, is more administrator than despot,

preserver of arcane ritual and curator of exquisite artifacts,

he’s still powerful enough to stop traffic

on a dime: whole boulevards swept clean of common

commuters, even side streets, making room 

for the Main Attraction’s motorcade

and outlying security detachments. Product managers blitzed on

caffeine had to walk to work in their expensive not meant to be

walked so far in shoes while sleek papal courtiers 

sweet talked the press and ate prime rib for lunch, every-

one, even elected officials and their

fresh haircuts—the mayor’s

“do” was especially well-wrought, with more bounce per ounce

than a new tennis ball—at least mimed the bent knee.

Yes, we are attentive when the Vicar of Christ speaks,

respectful even, for a while anyway, some of us

at least half-amazed, if politely mute about it,

that someone so important could seem so,

well, insignificant. But then sacred and secular are a little fuzzy

in my poor confused head: batmobile I can still cope with,

though I must confess—forgive me, father, etc.

   and a thousand “Hail Marys” to you too, dude—that  

popemobile goes way beyond my grasp of what’s holy in the moly.

REM - Loosing my Religion