Working on the Weekend

Fantasia 30 x 40 cm - watercolour/ink/gesso - painting by Karin Goeppert

JOBS

Take this paycheck and stick it where

the sun doth shine—and p’raps it

will grow some zeros there. I’m one of those

who still believes in photosynthesis.

Worked the early shift yesterday,

found to my bitter disappointment that there was

no double-time left over, not a scrap, just time-and-a half

though none for me. “You came early,” grunted

the shift patriarch, “go on home and take care of your kids.”

But I need some moneys, I need some moneys bad.

My kids are a going concern. They deal by the monkey bars in the park.

One big difference between Old World and New: Hispanic women

clean the toilets of tax consultants in La Jolla, while in Brussels

slender-armed Slavic chicks scrub, after using, the bidets of inflated Eurocrats.

Speaking of occupational hazards, subtle distinctions, etc.,

someone who was in the army once told me that right after landing

airborne soldiers almost always pee: 800 paratroopers

urinating on a sandy drop-zone in North Carolina. The world

is weird and wonderful. Sometimes. Every Friday we get free beer. If not

for that I’d have quit years ago. Not precisely weird but exactly wonderful.

As it appears YouTube has blocked us. So no music at the moment.

We might just change the name of the blog! ;-)

Venetian State of Mind

Lagune - Lagoon 50 x 60 cm by Karin Goeppert

VENETIAN

Maybe I should mention American

universities and banks, how they fake

Venice: gothic windows, phallic bell

towers, all those genre pieces

of plaster and brick, a gondolier in the Dean’s

office, in the lobby, whistling a Corelli concerto—

and there’s this stretch of marble and stained glass

in Hamburg that’s not a bad knock off at all.

Which brings to mind John Ruskin who thought

that Venice was a simulacrum of itself. Also a fake.

Nobody cares anyway. Could be Disney Land

or Vegas, just another place to go.

Attractive to honeymooners, to depressed aesthetes.

Somewhere in history

a fat man’s being led out for the last time, his last time,

hands bound, and the fat lady

is about to sing, and that the Bridge

of Sighs has the last laugh is an

irony much admired in these parts.

Want you scampi or Bellini? Says the Harlequin.

He means the composer, of course. Even an execution

is an overture of sorts, a flourish, the beginning of something. 

In der Wildnis - In the Wilderness 29 x 29 cm - pastel by Karin Goeppert

ORIENT ESPRESSO

It’s hot and wet, water dripping

from palm leaves, thought as dull as the glint

in a water buffalo’s stupefied eye

Mekong Delta, Kandahar, Sunni Triangle

reflected therein when you are knee deep in 

one of Uncle Sam’s disasters or have just enough luck

to be smoking a joint alongside the Ganges  

while some private first-class grunt

crawls through the elephant grass

there’s always someone who’s had the runs since ’68

and could really use a shower

and some tapioca pudding too and

a little R&R, perhaps, China Beach for the grunts and Goa

for the spiritual type whose knees hurt from prolonged

meditation, and the fragrance of fabric softener

on a summer morning in Des Moines—that would be nice, too.