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.