What came next

Calluna 1 42 x 56 cm acryl/dispersion color/oil pastel on paper

WHAT CAME NEXT

                                             Bright gods and Tuscan…

                                             … and the clouds bowe over the lake.

                                                                   Ezra Pound, from CANTO III

Getting tired of the city, rats playing

In the garbage, the self-conscious rudeness

of  people trying too hard to be ugly. In my writing

I’d like to put gods in the trees and nymphs, etc., but

down in the basement, where the pit bull is chained,

a handful of maenads are smoking crystal. Hopelessly urban.  

Meanwhile in Italy Poggio still makes wine in his frescoed villa

near the river Arno as if there were no modern world

or post-modern or any which way you prefer to   

label what seems to be happening right now. I’m thinking of

doing a reboot that will have me walking through a vineyard

of my own.  Wearing a straw hat and baggy white linen suit.

It’s too bad the thin gurgling of water in the cistern has to

remind me that everything is running out. Bills are due. Hammock’s broken.

In the deep cool shadows of the front porch Karin

is painting my state of mind. It’s part of a

series, each picture a little bit better than the last. I break

into a two-step, attempt a pirouette. I hear paint hitting canvas.  

Montis

 

Montis 50 x 65 cm gouache/dispersion colour/oil pastel on paper by Karin Goeppert

YOU HAVE TO WIN IN ORDER TO LOSE

The hero’s about ready to ford a

knee-deep stream—but just before he    

gets wet an annoying crone all bent and ugly

and with a voice that would make nails on a chalkboard

sound like an aria by Maria Callas

doesn’t ask but insists that he piggy back her  

across along with his magic sword and enchanted

jock strap which, at a pivotal point in the story,

he will convert into a sling, load a stone in the strap’s

roomy pouch, slay a monster blocking the mouth of a cave

in whose dark and dank reaches antiquity’s equivalent

of a Victoria’s Secrets model will be waiting between a

rock and hard place to be rescued by this young stud

who’s scheduled to take back his ailing father’s kingdom

from disloyal and exceedingly nasty army officers, etc.

most of which has been brought to you by the annoying crone

who on the other side of the stream turns into a

dazzling god or goddess who says how fortunate you are

young fellow for you have passed the test and

here, take this magic ring, put it on the finger of Selina

captive in the monster’s cave, for later she will bear you three children

one of whom will marry a real estate mogul from New York

with designs on your throne—go with your instincts,

kid, which, as we know, will get you every time.

Are you alone?

Eiswand - Icewall 100 x 80 cm mixed media (acryl/oil/oil pastel/coffee) on canvas by Karin Goeppert

TOTAL DOUCHE BAG SOUGHT, REFERENCES UNNECESSARY

She’s looking for someone with hair, a large

tanned expanse of carpeted muscle. Add to that   

an offhand sadism, a weakness for exotic weaponry, should be    

a subtle cheat in games of chance and skill,

but no conscience in the Shakespearean

sense, no consciousness, which supposedly makes

cowards of us all, only a mechanical perfection required;

should speak a few languages, and have

an elegant, almost hypnotically persuasive way

with high level personnel in Mexican resorts,

the lowly also known to smile, if grudgingly, out of fear

because he makes everyone feel a little uncomfortable.

He would say: If it works, do it: If I do it, it works.

Marcel Proust peering through a keyhole. Millions clicking

their mouse. Fast forward, says Mistuh Kurtz, it don’t mean nuthin.