The White Stripes and the Thirty Year War

untitled 50 x 64 cm oil/ink/oilpastel

AS IF…

                                                         for Heinrich Heine                

As if we were on stage together     

with Jack White and a recently resur-

rected Jimmi Hendrix and were strumming

some strange tandem guitar-like thing  

as Jimmi and Jack struggled to keep up  

an assortment of groupies oiled and ready 

and sandwiches and cold beer awaiting us                                                                       

backstage the entire retinue impossibly high

as if the morning were like a girl on

one of those vast expensive sidewalks

in the Kurfürstendamm and mounted

atop a stack of pallets she’s munching

strawberries in voluptuous slow-mo

as if she were all alone in the world

as if we were all alone in the world as

if five of your best enemies were hanging  

from various fruit trees in the front yard

as if the aftermath of a battle fought  

in the Thirty Years War had taken up exactly  

half of your property as if your neighbors were   

scandalized by all this unexpected mayhem    

as if what they thought mattered anyway.

The White Stripes - Seven Nation Army