Confessions of a Poet and an Artist

Calluna 80 x 100 cm acryl/dispersion color/oilpastel on canvas by Karin Goeppert

CONFESSION

God and I are not always on the same page.

We beg to differ, quibble over this and that.

When I’ve had a little too much Idolatry—

the Red label, not the White or Black—

I’m ready to bitch-slap the world, railing away

like a wannabe stand-up comic in front of

an open mike: scratch the surface of a poet

you find a lay priest hungry for a chuckle.

Meantime God’s earthly sales reps waver  

between crises of faith and joyful slaughter of the infidel—

take your pick—while a few slip into some

dim edifice of sin, whorehouse or men’s room

of a Detroit bus station—take your pick—only to

come out the other end holier-than-thou than ever.

Altars heaped with shreds of ozone and Brazilian

T-bone steaks and still there’s cancer and every kind of slavery.  

And yet—you can write me up if you want to—and yet, God’s wife

is absolutely gorgeous. I‘ve always liked the wives of major deities.

When they are witty, and don’t force me to say grace before supper.

Pity and Terror

untitled 34 x 16,5 cm gouache/oil pastel

PITY & TERROR

Closing my eyes

I manage to hit the ball anyway,

slide into first, pull a groin

muscle, limp away to scattered,

mildly ironic applause—an off-duty

cheerleader offers me a

pastiche of smile/frown plus

a touch of desire/disgust overlap—

some girls are really good at that look—

but windows of opportunity being

sometimes microscopic if not mythic

she just as quickly takes it back;

I’m hanging from a cross

between Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas—

it’s all fake but it hurts anyway—

while Stanly Kubrick stands in front of us—

he’s highly pissed off, by the way, frustrated,  

every inch the Unappeasable Maestro;

a trailer

in Kentucky

flickers softly in swamp light,

a woman emerging through the door,

one enormous body part following the other—

she’s holding one of the hounds

of hell by its collar—in her other hand

a sawed-off shotgun—I give her

the pizza I’m delivering

then float off on fumes of crystal meth; you

told me you saw a stranger, a girl

in her twenties, twice in one day

when you were

in Frankfurt—the first time after a showing

of Schindler’s List—she was sitting on the curb

out front, cry-heaving with grief—and the second

time in a techno club, her slender, sweaty body

changing color constantly under strobe lights—

this is how we get through, this is how

we deport pain and sorrow to a back lot

knowing they will return and not caring—

but you never told me

why you were in Frankfurt just then

or never seem to get what you need from life.