On The Other Hand

untitled 40 x 53 cm gouache auf Himalaya Büttenpapier c/o Karin Goeppert

ON THE OTHER HAND

Someone I used to know—don’t

ask who—telling me all the time

isn’t it wonderful to be alive

because the world’s a grand

ball room of inspired

madness and beauty

some of which

decorated with frescoes

from Ghirlandaio’s workshop—

elegant, good looking

players of the day acting out the Life of

the Virgin and the life of St. John the Baptist

in Santa Maria Novella, and in the bay off

the north transept a fresco by Masaccio tries

to figure out perspective for the first time

since antiquity—the Holy Trinity—Mary Mother

of God looking a lot like a therapist

I once knew—and not always a splatter job

by Francis Bacon or David Cronenberg.

I noticed the other day—don’t ask which

one—that somebody’d taken selfies at Auschwitz,

then posted them on Facebook. This qualifies  

as a new development. Far as I know, in pre-social network

days smiley faces were not sewn onto complementary

striped p.j.s. But who am I to judge? Ah, that

famous question. And yet, I’m a certifiably

sentient being. And I know

how to take a Pamplona bull by the horns,

then serve him up with sautéed mushrooms, i.e.,

I’m adaptable; and

as morally “flexible” as the situation

dictates. But selfies

at Auschwitz?  Where the gas chambers

asphyxiated, and the ovens smoked? The mere thought

makes me want to take a shower.

A brain shower, a cerebral bath.

This evening we have nothing better to do than

line up to buy tickets for “Exterminator 2.0”—

I’m wearing a wig and sunglasses—looking a little like

Thomas Jefferson on vacation in Virginia Beach— in case

one of my “friends” walks by, on his way to the Exhibition,

on her way to the Rite of Spring or a lecture on wassuup.

Who isn’t helpless? Someone I don’t know once said that.