Contemplate This

 

Abstract Meadow 21 x 29.7 pastel on paper c/o Karin Goeppert

CONTEMPLATE THIS

I’m trying to be a better person.

I really want to improve.

I usually only eat meat that’s been

coddled from “stable to table.”

I renounce violence at least

three times a week. Still,

I almost regret not deconstructing

my wife’s first boyfriend’s distinctly sagging

inexplicably self-satisfied face

when he dropped by for dinner

during the Great Heat Wave of 2011—

deconstruction, yeah, that’s it, between dessert

and a lovely espresso with a splash of grappa in

it would have literally hit the spot.

Therapeutically minded

I contemplate various forms

of domestic plant life. The slightly

nodding fronds are reassuringly mute

yet an orchid’s pale creamy petals

as pale and creamy as sauce

over one of those pigs, roasted now,

who, if you believe the PR department

died happy—and over Swabian pasta—

make me think of W. eating and talking

talking and eating

and all I want to do

is disable his point of view.

The world is made of ten-thousand opinions.

Whose logic isn’t exhausting? At the same time

the trees are ecstatic with birds, their

give-and-take mercifully indecipherable.

Swirling flocks of swallows

soaring and dipping in Cairo

doing somersaults in Athens, in Berlin

and there I go again—just can’t stop dropping those names.

The mountains, The mountains

The scary Climb 40 x 30 cm mixed media on paper

MOUNTAIN LOVE

What can you say about mountains?

That you can’t fit them into a phone? But, look, you can.

When I’m on top of one of

them I’m a little high because I’m short

of oxygen after the climb and take huge

gulps of air to compensate, a pulmonary phenomenon  

Brad Pitt coolly elucidates in “Fight Club.”  

I’m inspirationally

high…sometimes. Other times I’m somewhat numb, a little

detached, wondering what kind of beer I’ll have with

my schnitzel when we’re gemütlich and sleepy in town. And

I’m wondering but it’s no wonder they put cheese on everything

in the Gasthäuser; emmentaler, greyerzer; bells clanking

lethargically when the cows lick their muddy hides, their

tongues, great pink saliva laced slabs, reaching out, touching you,

like an old commercial for long distance phone calls.

Some of the higher peaks here look like

they’ve been in a fight, are gorgeously deformed.

Others have grass growing on steeply slanting faces, softening,

but still irredeemably aloof. They will not be walked upon.

Music to accompany these writhing piles of rock shouldn’t be Wagner

or Strauss. I would prefer the Miles Davis of “Kind of Blue”

or something tense but quiet by Charles Mingus. Water breathing   

out cold air as it falls; music so cool it almost can’t be bothered.

Art and Poetry for several occasions

 

Maremma 40 x 50 cm ink/ashes on canvas

POEM FOR SEVERAL OCCASIONS

If only there was botox

for the brain. Unsightly bulges

and crevices flattened and filled. The limbic

system tightened up. No more hard feelings,

no jitterbugging hesitations. A constant cool front

moving in; you chill; you bop. Anything goes

and we’re loving it. Like writers who

are heartlessly literal: we call a

fish a fish. Squirming on the hook,

it’s still a fish, isn’t it?  

That’s life, as Sinatra sang. You bend over

to pick up a cheese burger and trigger a booby trap.

That was life.

Speaking of booby traps: touch a girl’s

knee, you’re out of a job. Then you remember

Nietzsche, what he wrote about the debilitating

effects of power on intelligence. Nailed that one.

No, life is a rum commercial in 1989. That’s what we want.

But who knows how many takes it took to get it right?

Anyone out there privy to that info?

When a very young whore, I mean young— so young

she reminds you of somebody’s baby sister

the night of her junior prom—staggers out

of her pimp’s Hummer, in Prague maybe

or Warsaw no less, she’s still a whore, isn’t she? Her bruises

are predictable, even banal. Still, you wince, you wince

and try to forget that you’re a bit of a softy after all; maybe  

have a sister somewhere. Still, this is the world. This is how

the world plays its game. But the red, that red,

no matter its—contextual relevance?—belongs inside.

Fireworks

 

Floris 56 x 42 cm acrylic on paper

THE KING’S DAUGHTERS

                                                             …you think you’re so clever and classless and free

                                                             But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.

                                                                  From WORKING CLASS HERO, John Lennon

The King’s daughters made their father a gift of

three Arabian steeds, after which he chopped off

their husbands’ heads—some plot

or other, badly planned, sloppily carried out—

   rain pattering down

on the blood-slicked platform. A concert, banners shaken

by a rowdy spring wind, a procession, the entire

court admiring itself on horseback. Thousands of the unwashed

surging against a wall of palace guards the plumes

of whose helmets a glossy, sticky-looking red. Another royal wedding, another

stiff-limbed cadet, undistinguished but impressively uniformed, marching

to the scaffold of an open carriage, always the same one

the ecstatic multitude, lining the roads, applauding every

procedure: a million flags hanging limply from damp fists.  

Seeing Things

 

Sunny Meadow 29,5 x 20,5 cm mixed media on brown paper

SEEING THINGS

Domestic bliss was

not on the agenda.

Seeing through step-father # 1—socio-

pathic flim-flam artist with two

maybe three aliases and five marriages

on his rap sheet—for a few   

fairly adventurous years, then

clean through and right out the other  

side of step-father # 2, witlessly transparent,

arms and legs aggressive animals

not knowing who to hit or kick next; then another life   

later looking at a view from the cliff  

isle of Hydra 

one hot eucalyptus-scented day

swimming off the rocks with

three flight attendants from Quantas

eating feta for the first time ever

investigating the tannic properties of retsina

meeting a girl of such virtue

her skin left burn marks on my finger tips    

See the Acropolis

and die, no, that’s not it, see Naples and drop dead

or at least hallucinate

in a tall narrow alley-way where

squinting accurately I see

a mirage of the Roman empire

in the twenty first-century AD

birds in cages outside tiny windows

pumping out a little street music

and now we’re here

in the midst of a cease fire on the verge of truce

“Jungle Blues” on the turntable

fragrance of orange, of buttered toast and honey, coffee

good strong coffee and there you are old

enemy now nearly my best friend again wrapped up in

turquoise bathrobe smiling into a hand-painted tea cup

planning your day as if all you have ever known is peace.