Dazed and Confused for so long it's not true....

Daphne auf Yupo - Daphne on Yupo 32 x 22 cm by Karin Goeppert

GRUNT

You didn’t actually jump

out of an airplane, you merely shuffled

till you ran out of floor, then you were

out there banging along the “skin”

of the aircraft, paralyzed

by a panic of such sublimity you’re unable

to remember what it felt like, silk opening

more or less horizontally,

saved again.

You hit the sand, brushed off,

took a leak, moved on to the tree line, shot an

azimuth—a compass reading, not a local animal—

even so you often got lost

in some awful swamp at Fort Polk, Louisiana,

in the poison ivy of Fort Benning, Georgia,

in the Columbian girls of the Canal Zone

at ten-bucks a pop the best bargain in town

got lost in them too, lost among civilians

at the National Gallery in D.C. who mocked you when

much too wasted on Mexican weed and Southern Comfort 

and something else which, symptomatically enough, you don’t  

remember, you looked at the pictures too up close and

slipped through the cracks of badly restored Old Masters

or the girl in Carmel who once said, unhappily, disgustedly

even, “Are you lost? I didn’t know people like you came here.”

Dazed and Confused - Led Zeppelin 

Jeep's Blues

Die letzte Welle - The last Wave 38,5 x 48,5 cm by Karin Goeppert

THE SEARCH

The man who was talking to her said

he once sat naked in candlelight

for hours on a cold hardwood floor   

till someone came along and remarked,

“Maybe you should get out more often.”

He had spent two years in Burma, meditating

every day all day, before returning home to Illinois,

nerves uprooted, digestive tract in an uproar.

“We in the West tend to be literal minded,” he said.

“And greedy. We always want too much of a good thing.”

At a Zen Do in Kyoto the native monks

sneak out for the Japanese equivalent of fried steak

as the Dutch novice slurps down some rice and vegetable

concoction.  Asked to come along, he’s indignant.

J.S. Bach, on night duty at the church boarding school,

composes a cantata silently to himself while listening

to children dream. My half-brother Gary, a little 

league pitcher of some promise, ruins his right arm.

After surgery his parents have him out in the yard

throwing with his left arm. “Why have you come to us?” the

Zen master asks the Dutch novice. “I am searching for

the meaning of life.”—“The meaning of life?” asks the

master. “Ah, that’s easy.” A strict little frown. “Life is a joke. But it

takes much time and hard work and meditation to find this out.”

Far as I know he’s still out there searching for the punch line.  

Jeeps Blues by Duke Ellington

Orient Espresso

Nachtblume - Nightflower 60 x 50 cm - acryl/spraypaint/ink

CHANGE IN THE WEATHER

Confucius say that Charley Chan wore make-up and fake eye lids.

There are said to be ten thousand things that offend

so why not start with Asia and work our way westward?

The accent didn’t work either, more Assyrian

than Manchurian, and while watching I had the urge

to touch your breasts. They looked so soft. And then

we ate an envelope of some deceptively tasty chemical product.

The rest, as they say, is a blank. What you don’t know about me

(and if you did would increase your affection eight-fold at least)

is that I worship willow trees and would like to spend my afternoons

beneath one of them, composing poetry, smoking weed,

and chatting up the pretty things giggling

vacantly by the River of White Cranes.

I would turn into a Chinese poem

by a defrocked monk (one of those fabled

transformations making it possible for us to grasp  

how backwards and forwards are essentially the same) and we

would dance in the sunlight (music from the 60’s and 70’s)

and drink rice wine and eat sweet and sour

while arguing bitterly in the cold shadows of Taishan.

Erik Satie - Gnossienne No. 1

played by Alessio Nanni