Nordwand

 

Nordwand (North Face) 30 x 40 cm gouache on paper by Karin Goeppert

WHAT I REALLY NEED AND I MEAN YESTERDAY

                                                                 

                                                      In the myth that inspires Schulz’s writings

                                                      individuality is a type of theatrical display,

                                                      in which matter assumes a temporary role—

                                                      a human, a cockroach—and moves on.

                                                                                   John Gray

Who knows

maybe we are machines

but today I feel like an animal.

No need for an oil change, or spare

parts found in an old shed in some

grease monkey’s disused back yard.

The sensations I feel are of being

swollen up slightly in parts and sweaty all over,

loose-limbed, a tingling impatience. I might even   

be on the cusp of a sustained bout of warm-

blooded well-being. Like the hawk I once saw

mounted atop a hyperventilating

pigeon. Of course I could as easily  

be the pigeon in this scenario, slowly lifting

off in a predator’s talons. Or the silver fox some skeptics    

don’t believe I encountered one winter   

day in a city park but I did. I don’t have a chip

on my shoulder so much as a diving board, an

observation platform on Mars. It might take some time

to snap out of it. Then back to the tax return,

weekend shopping list, an evening of Sibelius.

Until then however what I really need

and I mean yesterday is something

physical to occur and as expe-

ditiously as possible. Someone to drop a

piece of meat on my plate—an incredible

Venetian girl, say, in a dirndl as the meat dropper, a diploma

in Primal Poetry framed and mounted, alas, on a wall

of her boyfriend’s mixed martial arts dojo

just above his rolled-up yoga mat, one of those

it just ain’t gonna happen situations, etc.

What does a machine snack on at three in the morning,

slit-eyed in the fridge light, claws of anxiety

gently tearing its psyche into edible bits, tomorrow

already today? Does it prefer

Matisse to Picasso? Proust to Joyce? Although not a vibrator

has it ever touched its lover with a vibrating hand?

Has it ever felt the pain of her absence? I mean become the pain,

so that its chest (or equivalent) is like the floor at Grand Central, 8 am?

Avalanche

Lawine - Avalanche 100 x 80 cm mixed media with coffee on canvas c/o Karin Goeppert

PROMETHEUS IN FLORIDA

He once aspired to be assistant Secretary-of-State

for Caribbean Affairs, and then he aspired

to the post of cultural attache´ in one of those

glittering gulf states famous for its opulent shopping

malls and jewel-encrusted mosque. And now

he spends his days in the bars of Tapioca Bay, Florida.

We end up on a park bench, near the

Confederate equestrian statue

whose head was stolen by frat boys in the 80’s—never

recovered; people still talk about it—position ourselves

beneath a shabby palm tree and eat the cool flesh of a mango. Slowly.

Wonder briefly about the symbolic use of a headless statue in this poem.

Then stop wondering: inconsequence dines on our spirits,  

like that razor beaked vulture, whatever her name is—

she might be German—tearing out the liver

of some Greek politician, eating it, then repeating the process,

further proof that everything sort of recurs. We are lost again

in the precincts of a fun-haunted tableau. Cuban dancers are lining up.

Girls with legs up to here. While an old man smiles at his trumpet.

It's the end of the World

Orange meets Black 80 x 80 cm acryl on canvas by Karin Goeppert

Because there is so much black in this work it was very hard to photograph it. I had help to reproduce it by my very good friend Alan Constant, photographer from San Francisco. Please have a look at his wonderful photographs:  http://jalanconstant.com/

Aufgrund des hohen Schwarzanteils war es sehr schwierig, diese Arbeit zu fotografieren. Hilfe hatte ich hier von meinem sehr guten Freund Alan Constant, ein Fotograf aus San Francisco. Hier kann man einen Blick auf seine wirklich schönen Fotografien werfen: http://jalanconstant.com/

FEAR

There are people who know how the world works

can explain the physics of an interface connecting the

viewer to a digitally enhanced module in a robot’s  

brain just before it cleans your toilet or what       

eternal recurrence really means or why our favorite café

in Oakland was called “The Edible Complex,” but

not why half the room emptied when we “crossed swords”

like a pirate’s flag but instead of skull n’ bones a smiley face

awesome the things that keep coming back   maybe it’s from

the joke of the month club but are you really writing

the sequel to “Forrest Gump”  shouldn’t there be a used-up content

clause in the universal contract stipulating enough is enough

and I’ve also heard that Forrest will win the first Nobel prize for

empathy   there’s something tacky about rehashing

faux innocence reimagined as a glitch in the left hemisphere of

the pre-frontal cortex and yet at least you are not remaking

the end of the world as we know it there’s plenty to be afraid of

but do we have to like it?  

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends

Abendsee - Eveninglake 19,5 x 29,5 cm acryl/coffee on watercolour paper c/o Karin Goeppert

HUNTER GATHERERS

                                        

                                       Want to make us happy? Give us something to obsess on.

I know someone who collects mail boxes. Rural routes, Missouri.

Lock it up.

A woman, an acquaintance of mine, who scours

East-central Europe for Soviet era sex manuals—

a joint venture I’m in the midst, the mist, the miasma

of reconsidering.

Pull it back.

And there are some haunters of public libraries

who, forgetting to eat, faint over back issues

of Cahiers d’ Cinema or New Poetics, Volume XXIII.

Show it off.

A desire to acquire scratchy fuzzy echoes of music/

oral epics last heard live in a small corner of the Persian empire—

lock it up—

in a dead language, no less, preserved on thread-bare tape

   in an Austin, Texas vault.

Lock it up. Pull it back. Show it off. Lock it up. Defend it

to the death, if need be, against all those who couldn’t care less.