Tales of Disaster and Ineptitude

Nothing ever stops 40 x 50 cm acryl painting by Karin Goeppert

TALES OF DISASTER AND INEPTITUDE

It’s time to rely on my favorite drugs.

Bowl of something pungent. Turkish kebab, 

side-order of fries. Shame tossed out

the window like a slightly warped Frisbee.   

Good to go, I go. No need to dump all

I own into a crippled shopping cart, stumble down a wormhole

the size of the Cow Palace, resurface in ‘73 at a 

Who concert, Pete Townshend pleading with

the crowd to cough up a substitute drummer

for the temporarily distracted (unconscious) Keith Moon

when I am lured on stage, bait being a free six-pack of Bud,

and acquit myself honorably in “Baba O’ Riley”)—

no, I’ll just show up half-shitfaced at dinner parties,

frazzled beyond repair by multiple confusions,

delighting my friends with tales of disaster and ineptitude.

Thank God Carnival is about to start. Party bus packed

with celebrants. Not an introvert in this…what are we precisely,

my dear Watson, menagerie, tableau vivant,

collection of wannabe hipsters? What a thing to wannabe.

Yet, here we are, all hyped up for shock and awe,  

posing for a selfie that future generations can admire,

paradise being whatever you post  

for instant posterity. A bag of glazed doughnuts

in Florida. A smile that won’t quit.  

Grossstadtgeflüster - Big City Whispers

A post about big city life - a somewhat cocky, fresh Berlin post. This is the city we live in, this is what we experience every day. We live in a part of Berlin that is a bit wild and where at one point the alternative scene lived. Now in the 21st century things are quite a bit different, a lot of gentrification going on but you can still find some wild stuff - like this video. It was shot quite close to here, in one of the subway stations of the line we take every day. 

Ein post über das Großstadtleben - frech wie Berlin oft ist. Das ist die Stadt in der wir leben, so erleben wir es jeden Tag. Wir leben in Kreuzberg, einem Stadtteil, der mal wilder war als die anderen, in dem die alternative Szene lebte. Jetzt, im 21. Jahrhundert ist alles etwas anders. Wir werden gentrifiziert, aber man kann doch immer noch ein paar wilde Sachen erleben - wie z.B. das video. Es wurde hier ganz in der Nähe aufgenommen. Auch in einer U-Bahn-Station der Linie, die wir alle täglich benutzen.

Cyclades 24 x 30 cm mixed media on canvas by Karin Goeppert

A FEW THOUGHTS ON THE SUBJECT

According to reports 345 people

in the city go missing every year. That’s

almost one per day. Nobody knows where

they go nor seems to care. Still, it

does give us a topic to explore 

on a warm summer evening as we sip wheat beer,

an intermittent fragrance of ginger and curry drifting    

out of The Black Hole of Calcutta’s kitchen window. A cyclist

puffing on a joint is just enough of a dick

to hog most of the sidewalk, which infuriates my wife.

Sometimes she blocks the way, but that’s martyrdom.

I suggest a couple of hands-on solutions. Carry a sharp object   

with which you can puncture tires. Or one of those little 

hammers doctors use to test a body’s reflexes,

which would allow you to attack the problem directly.

In a sprawling, dirty, loud, indifferent city

pocked with inner-recesses  

deep inside brightly painted courtyards 

linked by graffiti-spattered catacomb-like tunnels

it’s not difficult to conceal a blunt object. After

you wipe off the blood and finger prints, you’re good to go.

Near the subway station in Neukölln you can still see holes

gouged out of buildings: Russian bullets, WW 2. Francis Bacon

painted violence as the governing force of life. Yet all we want is    

to sit on a sunlit bench, roll up our sleeves, and let the world drift away.   

Morrocan Garden

Marokkanischer Garten - Morrocan Garden 50 x 50 cm acryl painting by Karin Goeppert

OLD MASTER ITALIAN PAINTING

is a lot about fabric and

its folded textures. Hair as a formal

statement mounted on what is

so much more than pretty  

in its aura of self-acceptance

that we can only accept it with misgivings—we’ve

known a few people with that dark magic: sign

up for my religion, they seem to say, or

turn away at your loss; either way you’re screwed—

and the pain of sorrow so exquisitely  

arranged in a Botticelli Madonna

that it could be the visual definition of

radically decelerated ecstasy. She looks like

she has a very bad cold, but you know

it’s more than that. She, this post-pagan,

strawberry blond Cassandra—she’s seen something awful.   

Here’s what makes her post-: she gives in too easily, no struggle.  

Too much pity and you’re lost; not enough you’re not nice.

Either way someone’s screwed. Outside  

a woman’s disappointment with you is text book,

almost clinical. What her face seems to express 

as you play soccer with a plastic coffee cup—

and which goes a shade darker

when you glance up just in time to glimpse a 

bright-skinned girl skateboarding by, glimpse turning

into elaborate, open-mouthed, speechless desire—

could render the stupid thoughtful for a second.

A Day in the Park

Ein Tag im Park - A Day in the Park 80 x 80 cm c/o Karin Goeppert

DIVA

In a better world,

yes, in the world of our betters

Diva’s robes are as blue as a starless night 

   coercing an uneasy elite

lit by moonlight on putting irons

into a pattern of progress then back again

to the pleasures of John Cheever ( phalanx

of whisky breathed    trust-fund dipshits    dressed in Lacoste

           shod sockless in loafers)    hints of

white collar indiscretion wedged between

                                   a suburban mansion’s mossy cracks.

Equipped with miles of floss the Feds ride in

with their Siren: strawberry blond, brooding Monica Vitti

fresh from Sorrento (circa 1966) has most of our undivided lust.

“Fuck with me,” she whispers hoarsely, “I WILL kick your ass.”

Which makes some of us rethink our initial fantasy

involving a pink motel beneath palm trees and drinks

           on the terrace, etc.

In the old days she. Are those plateaus or platforms? Go, girl

whimpers the past as she pistol whips it into submission.

I’d love to introduce her to Lisbeth as played by Roony Mara.

Pour myself a drink. Set up the sub-titles. Put all calls on hold.  

Illusion of Order in the Shopping Mall

Illusion of Order 25 x 30 cm acryl on canvas

ELVIS/ TUPELO,  MISSISSIPPI

Avatar of cool breaking the law

just because it’s, like, there

(Marlon Brando’s character

in the “Wild One” who when asked

by a village elder what he’s rebelling against

says, “Whatdaya got?”)

and the rock n’ roll

heard on a sidewalk

in Tupelo, Miss., for twenty

some years   

named the most

American city in

America (which on

many levels seems

totally bizarre to me. As if Bayonne

were deemed the “Frenchest” city in France

length of baguettes, rankness of cheese

at issue among other things, etc.);  

criteria?

Two shopping malls

in stores of which assault weapons stand

tall, oiled, erect, shining in their racks;

a universal love of football and fried food,

the natives as supersized as what they  

feed on—pizza burger hot-dog pop corn

chocolate chip raspberry ice-cream, etc.—

drifting through the malls chewing

shuffling along draped in the oversized

football jerseys of their favorite teams,

mouth breathers, too, plus the occasional

meth head and white supremacist,

God fearing native born Americans

looking for some air-conditioned fun,

a spectacle that seems to have

no historical precedence. T.

Town the birthplace of

the man with the magic hips:

people everywhere

erecting altars to the “King”

in their trailer homes

reporting sightings of that royal personage

wiggling his fat butt in a Vegas parking lot, etc.

What have we learned?

That lovers in whom we’ve

foolishly placed our hopes

turn out at the end of

a sticky day in the Mississippi Delta

to be hound dogs after all?

Maybe.

Tupelo, Mississippi

where the heat, like Elvis, is always

making a comeback. Today

a pleasant seventy-five, by

Friday we will be swimming through

the high nineties.

I feel vaguely

Malaysian or Bengali  

nodding off

in my rickshaw

waiting for

the monsoon

and the only Elvis I’d listen to now ( Elvis

von Tupelo I mean)

would be his basement tapes of classical Indian ragas.  

(FYI: the last surviving Elvis lives in Canada

which, on a number of levels, is totally bizarre to me.)