Foreign Intrigue

Dancing the Night Away 40 x 30 cm

TRIPPING

The edge of a periphery, the blind old

sky scrawled upon by cook fires—smells good, looks weird.

But all I have to do is close my eyes half-way and  

   do the radio talk fandango, Rush at rush hour,

for it to remind me of Oklahoma City

                         on a sultry afternoon.

Blueprint for disaster? We just might have one

or two left over from the last one. Let me check. Yep,

a career of some sort does seem to beckon

through the wood smoke: glitter of poplars,

opium deserts, feckless self-created experts

in a cluster-fuck of mutual confusion, collusion—you’ll fit right in.

Here’s what happened. Special Ops

                          transmitted grid coordinates, and a rare variety   

   of shit hit the fan. It took

years to clean up and a treatise or two (“think tanks”), but now

                                    the flanks of smoking camels

(ever addictive) loom on a mountain ridge the color of

a suburban sofa, i.e., beige, and we like it here, could

be, not on, but BE the cutting edge of something interesting

if only we can stick it out. So, fill the pipe, my love,

my dark-eyed friend, remind music she’s heiress to

                        the wind, and that the river of life in these parts  

burns with a million fevers no tablet can cure. 

Led Zeppelin - Kashmir

La Dolce Vita

Blaue Briese - Blue Breeze 28,5 x 38,5 cm

THE SWEET LIFE

Being in Italy is a sensuous project

requiring intelligence and good taste.

Failing those qualities, money, or at

least a facsimile thereof, helps a lot.

In these parts appetite is a feeling,

a deep emotion fraught with musical content. 

Thus lunch today is a concerto for rose-tinted

thinly sliced veal in a shallow pool of olive oil

accented with anarchic squirts of lemon. But first

an overture because after two glasses of vino rosso

della casa lunch has become operatic: ravioli delicately

packed with minced whatever, cooked in butter,

draped with fragile flakes of sage. Dolce and coffee 

follow. A nearly depleted credit card

struggles to pay for all of this.

Not a drop of free grappa, however, despite   

a shitload of bravos and bravas dispensed

by two sincerely satisfied customers. Nonetheless,

we lurch happily into sunlight, the heroic streets

belonging to us. But this a lie. My “roots” are on

the other side of water, digging ever deeper in sub-soil

I don’t know anymore, slippery, metamorphic,

vaguely fraudulent. Memory seems like another

word for self-deception. Or as Wyndam Lewis more

or less put it: “Roots? What are we, bushes and

trees…or men?” On the other hand, that asshole

of a genius did praise Hitler. Still, I don’t feel like 

a vegetable or fruit, or even a tall noble

redwood on some wind-warped bluff

lording over the Pacific. I am a

sated animal who laughably assumes 

he’s sui generis, roughly, pulling his load 

of fear and guilt and perfunctory self-loathing

but on his way to admire how Andrea Del Sarto

painted hands, and Raphael, the sweetness of mother and child.    

Corelli - Concerto grosso opus 6 No. 8

Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert

Invitation

Das Licht auf der anderen Seite - The Light on the other Side 52 x 36 cm

INVITATION

I used to like people, would dream about them…mindlessly…magnificent

animals is what Nietzsche called us, and I even acquired a few of my own, kept them

around the house till, half-past dead with boredom, I had just enough strength

   left to throw them out. Like most empires at a certain stage

of their decline, I dream mainly of food, small pleasures, tiny divertimenti.

And alcohol. And the wild weed I cultivate amid corn and cucumbers. But now that

you’ve wandered in…my new friend!...let’s hang out together beneath the trellis

and eat olives and feta cheese in a cucumber salad and drink retsina and smoke from

the pipe of wisdom. Maybe I’ll give you that massage I promised in a moment

of mindless lust. Let’s talk of old times we’ve never shared

because the best parties are sometimes those that have no reason to exist…like some

poems…then I’ll switch on the boogie box…can’t imagine never dancing again. You? 

Let's Dance - David Bowie

Winter

Im Baum - In the Tree 36 x 52 cm

WINTER TO THE CORE

Located in the deeps of cold fog and snow drifts  

is a museum in which a sun burned meadow by Monet   

hangs in a heat haze of July or August, young ladies   

in long gloves underneath parasols, and

across the room is a Renoir girl—

hands red, 

roughened by work—

the liquid green light of oak and chestnut leaves

surrounding but not touching her as she lingers on a porch,

the look of resignation on her face so consummate….

But who can get there? The wind comes clawing 

icily out of Russia, as far away as the Steppes, an awful hint on its breath

of the Red Army shitfaced on bathtub vodka

freezing the will, leaving it ravished and half consumed 

half way to the bus stop. All that’s left as the snow and ice swirl

by is the birthday call to a close friend who could just kill you for “reminding” her.

Winter - Vivaldi

performed by Julia Fischer