Walking with Franz

Walking with Franz 100 x 80 x 4,5 cm / 39.4 x 31.5 x 1.8 in acrylic/soft pastel on canvas

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PASTORALE

                                           “He is terribly afraid of dying

                                           because he hasn’t yet lived.”

                                                                       FRANZ KAFKA

The other night I dreamed

I was lost in a forest somewhere,

one of those sandy, piney affairs

one usually stumbles across then through

in the skinhead wastes of Brandenburg,

home of concertos,

home of French-speaking Prussian

emperors, homeland of the potato. The light is veiled

white and moist with sun surge

and we are all beginning to sweat a little.

Somewhere up ahead there’s a girl

and soon she’s walking right by us, wordless,

because the Prussians, unlike the Bavarians and Swabians,

never greet strangers when they’re out for a hike.

They walk right past you like you’re mist or smoke.

Soon, there’s a guy I’ve never seen before in front of us.

Pale, dressed in a pair of rumpled PJ’s, he looks bad.

He says, “You’d better change your priorities,” as if

we were in the middle of a conversation about life choices.

I feel like asking him, “Got any tips?”

But I know what he means, because this is a dream

and dreams are nothing if not indecipherable

and at the same time somehow obvious.

I choose sarcasm anyway:

“What do I owe you for this sage advice?”

“Everything,” he says, “that you have ever thought. Plus

whatever inborn rhythm and grace you might possess.

All the opportunities you’ve never exploited

because you were weak, or too tired, or unsure of yourself.

And all the dreams you’ve ever had of my wife I want out

of your head. Forever.” And now he looks really sad

as he raises his eyes and says: “And time. Just a little more time.”

This is not (my) America - No

 

Good Friday 25 x 19 cm mixed media on paper

The Trial 25 x 19 cm mixed media on paper

ORIGINS

The ones who came before us were

from lyrically named locations where the cheese smelled

strong and where the ladies didn’t always  

shave their underarms and hardly ever their legs

and where the common folk were hungry

most of the time except on feast days,

our ancestors having descended since then

upon someone else’s homeland with its streams

and rivers teeming with trout and other fish

and aboriginal skinny dippers   

whom we killed along with everything else that moved—

the habit of which is still with us, a great release apparently

for some of our more pent up citizens—

and measured out the land, the strongest

always getting more, naturally, though we were as ravenous 

in the end as at the beginning and always  

looking for a good deal and if we could get laid

in the bargain, then, hell yeah, more power to us—

beautiful and wild we continue to seduce who

ever catches our eye. Not unlike Bowie’s

Ziggy, we can “lick ‘em with a smile.” Every day the “Others”

push back and at the same time beg for more. “They

should know better,” utters a wised-up gnome, while his muse,

super cute but a bit of a scold, corn colored hair, freckles

and a slightly Asian cast to her eyes, peeks through her fingers. 

Honeypot

Honeypot 48 x 63 cm acrylic and charcoal on paper

A TASTE OF HONEY

The title’s somewhat misleading:

A Taste of Honey. Herb Albert

& The Tijuana Brass. On the album

cover a naked girl is buried up to and just

over her nipples in whipped cream.

The beauty of her breasts, sculpted in cream

(which in disillusioning reality was shaving cream)

defies description because it cannot be seen.

Voluptuous contours suggested, not shown.

And imagination hesitating all over the place, not willing

to sound like a personal essay on some porn blog.

Even before puberty I wondered about the physical

impact of a leisurely cuddle beneath that mountain

of magic cream, wanting, like all explorers, adventurers,

seekers, an object whose essence I could never grasp.

Look, she’s licking her finger. Only, where’s the honey?

My guess is that it’s concealed beneath the “whipped cream.”

Meanwhile walnuts shake their skins in the hot breeze.