Les Fleurs du Mal

Les Fleurs du Mal 80 x 80 cm acryl/gesso on linen canvas - available -

THE PERILS OF PLEASURE

My adventures in pleasure began

with twenty-four jars of baby food a day.

Grew so large I couldn’t move anymore,

dwarf whale stranded in its playpen. Since then there’s  

vintage Medoc, Lamb chops sprinkled with rosemary

and olive oil, lingerie photo spreads, the prose of Ben Lerner,

“the isles of Greece, the isles of Greece, “ und so weiter.

I’ve enjoyed life too much to deserve a career. Pleasure 

is even available to the guy who sleeps beneath 

the same tree in the park each night, smoking a self-rolled,    

inhaling so deeply there’s nothing left to exhale. Enjoyment as   

animal right, maybe, but even Epicurus thought we have

a problem with pleasure, the more we get

the more we want, and it’s never enough. Take Don Draper in “Mad Men”

fucking every woman who’s half-way willing, most

of whom quite a bit more than half-way,

yet whose unhappiness is a multiplex of many screens.

Raised in a whore house which, seen loosely, is

his version of twenty-four jars of baby food a day.

Bring ‘em on—willing women, lamb chops, etc.— as “W”

disastrously put it. On “The West Wing” someone says, a little too

sonorously, “I serve at the pleasure of the President.” Which

sounds about as enticing as a long weekend in Detroit, in winter, alone.