Going Underground

 

Paradise Lost 100 x 100 cm acrylic on paper

GOING UNDERGROUND

                                                                      Now I am quietly waiting for

                                                                      the catastrophe of my personality

                                                                      to seem beautiful again….

                                                                                       Frank O’ Hara

How long have you been taking time off?

Love the outfit: way too tight Led Zep t-shirt,

garden clogs with air-holes, those

radically frayed hand-me-down cargo shorts….

No need to even the score or seize the upper hand. Who’s

keeping track? Certainly not your drinking buddies, currently busy

sprinkling hash over tobacco. The ultra-skinny old dude

with Jimmy Page hair? He’s ordering vodka shots. Sometimes life is  

entrepreneurial (whispers an inner-voice) waiting in its shop-front window,

a sex-worker in Amsterdam; other times a Vermeer girl off in a

shadow, double-checking her shopping list. Meaning? Mean-

while outside of your skin it is spring, so why not stand barefoot

on sun-warmed carpets? Strip clothes off, go walking—

more or less in that order—and surprise the neighborhood—not

the first time a master of your own disaster: Old Hippie

Let’s it All Hang Out Yet Again, shared on Facebook and thousands “like” it.

RESPECT

Harbinger 100 x 120 x 1.5 cm acrylic on canvas

TUSCAN ORDEAL

Netherlandish neo-pagans come here for

the Madagascar Hoopoe, a striped bird

with an umber head that looks like a helmet, and  

a long thin beak. It doesn’t sing or moan or whistle—

it shrieks as if someone has pissed it off.

The first time I heard one I thought some

Netflix spawned man-eating

creature had crawled up

to the side yard of our rented house:

rows of vines, olive trees flickering from white to pale dusty  

plush green. Then back.  Productive landscape, food factory.

Peasants must think we are nuts to come here

and watch them work. I try to picture leathery

farm hands with big white teeth pulling up in a tour bus

in front of a manufacturing facility, a chip-building campus

clutching meal tickets and smart phones. That’s us, in reverse.

Warm grass blades pricking my bare feet.  Late afternoon

and I’m in pajamas, sipping, I kid you not, a G&T.  Across the street

are three farm workers taking a break beneath a massive cherry tree,

observing a dork in his jammies at five PM. They’re intimidatingly

detached about it all. To add insult, two Madagascar Hoopoes

shriek from a shared tree limb. A blond woman in very short shorts

jogs by.  Doing what workers everywhere would do

each man gives his crotch a subconscious squeeze,

sending signals from his literal lap top. I have another sip.

In five days I’ll be teaching the gerund.

The present perfect progressive.

In five months I’ll know for sure I can’t go on.

This is known as the grammar of small despair. 

Some poems, art and music

Creek 120 x 100 x 1.5 cm acrylic on canvas

SOME POEMS

Ludwig Van Beethoven

once told a prince he was merely

a prince while he Beethoven was Beethoven, i.e.,

far superior to an aristocrat

what was that all about

I don’t know

he was rather self-conscious about his forehead

his “massive brow” the way it bulged

into everybody’s social space

which is about three feet in California

a foot and a half in New York City

doesn’t exist at all in Germany

people in your face

they don’t even know it

suddenly nose to nose and wondering why

why don’t we just move on

never thought I’d find you here

lost and found

waiting for someone to claim

you

is that a pun

a trope some people will say is “bad”

then why do they laugh

are there “good” puns

or “average”

markets tell us energy’s in decline

irrational exuberance

has taken a couple of weeks off

don’t put that in your mouth, honey

it’s so quiet out there     how do you pun on silence

what is the proper response to such a pun

a measured, ambiguous chuckle

you can keep the change

you can change for keeps

if I say another word ( measured, ambiguous smile)

I’ll kill you

Old Masters were the best

but would they win the superstar contests

think of what

was endured

plague      wars on front door steps

dreadful dearth of deodorant      thank

fully unfinished symphonies

the whole world was third

not just the part with diamond mines

or super cheap labor in it

identity issues     am I Stalinist or Trotskyite      Frank O’

Hara said de Kooning and Pollack were not mutually exclusive

Americans          hard

isolate     stoic        killers      according to

D. H. Lawrence

who actually slipped his mum an OD of morphine in a glass of warm milk

She was dying of cancer     in terrible pain

some things were easier back then

unspoken humane things

do you ever think about

the relationship between line

break and syntax

oh yeah        all the time      you wanna hand me that beer

Michaelangelo was an OM who rarely removed his boots

papal assistants

clothes pins pinching

their nostrils

hoisted him up to the Sistine ceiling

its holy images of sweat sauce over cubes

of beefcake on wet plaster

lightly sprinkled with powdered steroids        which wine

would you recommend       oh one of those muscular reds from the south

I don’t know who said we are less violent now than before

before what

I would gladly trade my second hand

International Harvester for a vintage panzer

which

in obscure German dialect

means dildo

don’t put that in your mouth, schatz        people

somewhat inbred

interesting physical deformities

ears that might have

made an elephant preen

food good if simple and the beer

did I mention the beer          it hasn’t

stopped raining since 1972

was Karl the Great “Charlemagne”      was that even legal

back then

King John saw fit to repent

repeat after me

if you eat water melon seeds you will not      I repeat    will not

not die of cancer

depends on what you do with it, Schatz, not how big it is     Dankeschön