Coming into Focus

 

Coming into Focus 60 x 60 cm mixed media - available -

QIANA                       

                                                                          A lightweight

                                                               manmade fiber chemically classed

                                                                            as nylon.

                                                                                    THE RANDOM HOUSE DICTIONARY

After the confusion is packed away—

precipitated by an Erik Rohmer girl  

blessed with the morals of late antiquity, say,

and bitter little pouches beneath

her eyes—and we ship it off like toxic waste

to a needy, cash-poor country

in equatorial Africa, we learn

to stretch our muscles in new ways,

in new words. The garden seems fresher then,

the Philosopher takes his pleasure calmly

and the Poet takes dictation calmly, and we take a break

from the daily idiocy, which sounds like a newspaper

and sometimes is, the colors astoundingly attentive

to our needs, like lovers, like lovers who really love us,

though no one in her right mind could possibly love me

nor you, for that matter, sorry, nor him nor her,

apologies, I mean come on is anyone really lovable

I think Ann Carson admitted in the Paris Review

that she’s a monster, that all of us are monsters

which is exactly what you might expect a classics professor/modernist poet

to say, that is, bronze age fatalism plus Avant-garde

pessimism equals: it doesn’t matter what and how

much we sacrifice to the gods our blue print

is left unaltered, that is, human beings

are excellent at making poems, pictures, bombs

and we can be so so so beautiful

but as far as living life goes, well, we’re pretty much

fuck ups, often getting stuck on issues such as

what would you do if all of your shirts were

made of nylon? There you are, sweating in the high school gym

dancing to ELO, the Bee Gees, almost happy. Everything

glistening, like ice, like a nylon shirt, like a headache

in the south of France—not enough bread, sweetie, or cheese— and I  

hadn’t a sou, and there’s hardly a fate worse than being hungry   

and sou-less in France, and because the old men were smoking their little

cigars in the 2nd class waiting room, laughing, having a hell of a good time. 

The World drifts in

 

Dog Rose V 40 x 50 cm acryl/spray paint on canvas - available -

GARY COOPER’S REAL AGE

A Swedish woman in Madrid helped us out

   she wore a blue uniform, a little red hat, tour guide

go to the youth hostel, she said, there you will find shelter

   what we found was an endless line

of young Europeans each holding a regulation bed sheet

   they looked different from us, noses and cheekbones

emphatic as if their faces had been fashioned from

the cobblestone road that runs between palace and cathedral

stoic boredom in their eyes traces of irony

   around their mouths

I remember walking under the orange trees of Cordoba 

   longing for a cigarette

   it was Sunday morning in southern Spain

   you can’t buy things Sunday mornings in Europe

   well regulated fountains splashing down

   to the Jewish Quarter, no Jews now though, expelled in 1492, no more Jews

after Columbus sailed the ocean

   took my first shit on the continent at a train station

Spanish-French border, Port Bou (Spain) Cerbère (France) the toilet (Turkish)

   room for the feet either side of a hole     interesting, non?

French border official looked like a Gallic Paul McCartney

   sans bass guitar sans Liverpool accent

had steak and pommes frites for dinner got lost in the Louvre

before it became Facebook showcase for selfie-taking philistines

   (thus bitched the old man, all day and well into the night)

Californians tossing Frisbees in St. Peter’s square     my fellow Americans

if provoked in Europe offer an annoyingly superior smile

light a cigarette, shrug ever

   so slightly     stoic, ironic   darling do I look like

          the secretary of state

   director of CIA    chairman of the fucking board of whatever corporation’s   

        destroying our universe      can I buy you a latte at             

Starbucks?       stoic, ironic

someone actually said I looked like Gary Cooper

   Christ, I was only eighteen

Gary Cooper was always fifty, I believe, or at least forty

   but never eighteen      this is where irony might have come in handy

Help Me

 

Ausgeschnitten - Carved out 23 x 50 cm pastel - available -

THE POET

This executive of eloquence

and he’s empty as a spoon.

Still, he’d like to mount the Erechtheum;

the Himalayas to know his weight; dip his toes in the Seine.

Nobody would dare ask him where in God’s name

he was taking them ( thematically, stylistically, wherever)

or why he can’t find anyone to iron his shirts.

He dreams of fireflies in an enchanted wood above Camogli.

He dreams of tenure. He dreams of liberating

an exotic waitress—Surinam? Macao?—enslaved

by a pancake house in Soda Springs, Illinois. He dreams

of one bottle of “Opus One” Cabernet Sauvignon. Then of two bottles

he dreams. He dreams of Cordoba, the orange trees there,

the white courtyards with tiled staircases that go

nowhere unclean, whiffs of jasmine, roasted chicken, garlic.

In his current day dream

lights are being strung from everything

in a dusty piazza, Calabria, baroque village, pagan celebration

   of some Christian holy day,

1957. The air is dry. Black haired women, warm

and moist, wearing floral-print dresses, their elegant

men dressed in white shirts and woolen slacks

with hideously elongated flies. We have no idea why

we’re here but the wine is cheap

and a few of the girls, appearing to need love,

pull us down with delicate urgency

to their talcum-powdered breasts.

In the light of a bonfire, and just what one

would expect, the village church is a

crumbling wedding cake; for about fifteen-minutes—

thanks, Andy—everyone’s a poet.

Voyage en Orient

 

The harder they come 40 x 50 cm acryl on linen canvas - available

FLAUBERT ON TOUR

Orange trees. Bamboo matting.

Glottal stops. Coptic

divines. Observing Max Du Camp get a hand job  

in the shadows of the Great Pyramid

   is an eye-opener, the Blood  

of Egypt spreading her lethargic thighs,

slapping the sides of our dirty bateau.

Breeze rises up, lifting caftans, exposing black asses

to frantic whippings for the fun of it. Were he alive

De Sade would have booked passage, learned a thing or two.  

And then onward to Constantinople,

mindless the whole way,

getting laid whenever possible,

thoughtless in Athens, too— you yourself wrote:

when the penis rises the brain dies—though

trained by class and romantic phantasy

to reflect on the glory of old Greece, the

inspiring nobility of mountain landscapes,

light, violet crowned hills, the whole 

kit and caboodle, laurel-wreathed, of received ideas.

Then back to France

          where the next best thing

to “skewering boys like kebabs” in a Cairo bathhouse

is barbecuing the bourgeoisie in their own backyards.