Entropy

 

Axelmannstein 100 x 80 cm / acrylic on canvas - c/o Karin Goeppert

ENTROPY

He used to tool around

on his vintage Vespa

with his Korean girl friend

now she’s gone and he’s

leaning over his walker somewhat

surprised by it all staring at my wife

the one thing that hasn’t changed

about him he likes small women

she says because he’s small

and now he’s even smaller

the trees look like they’ve aged

about fifty years in this heat

too shriveled up like bacon

and the wine dealer’s losing his jawline

in folds of whiskery flesh still

we haven’t talked in about

ten years because I think he’s

an unrepentant asshole

and although physical erosion

hasn’t added to his appeal he is

after having dumped his wife and two kids

fucking a lanky yoga instructor

told you he was an asshole

but here I am anyway trying to

lever indignation against envy

while both my knees are going kaput

slowly like they have all the time in the world

to disintegrate on their way to nowhere

and Karin’s hip and one of her knees freeze up

when she takes the stairs

like a peg-legged pirate

and what I mostly like to do

if you discount drinking cold beer

and eating sumptuous mountain food

after hiking all day is to

take naps whenever an opportunity arises

but spirituality someone says with an almost straight face

spirituality will save you every time

but is that better than a room full of English majors braiding

each other’s hair while a jukebox plays the Top Ten of our youth?

It's magic

 

Sideways 120 x 100 x 1,8 cm c/o Karin Goeppert

ADJUSTMENT

I have to knock myself down a peg.

Who else can? Some honcho right out

of Iowa who always falls off his bike, then writes

haiku about the gorgeousness of his tattoos? I don’t think so.

Justice is a do-it-yourself proposition or nothing at all.

A mission statement. Clearing bullshit out of the stables.

Beheading the babbling hydra within.

Being nicer to my wife, e.g., not peeing on the toilet seat, etc.

Research from reliable sources informs me that

if I don’t make such an adjustment, an embryo

of parasitical self-regard just might escape its pod,

weighing down the planet with too much me.

I know, you’re probably thinking of Mind Flayer

in Stranger Things. The second nastiest

motherfucker on television. And, dear reader, you’d be right.

Things can always get ugly. The way a presidential

news conference gets ugly. There’s something literally

modular about you and I—were you aware of that?—so we reach inside

like a mechanic working the valves of a pick-up

broken down on the side of a road some  

where in Montana. A small white clapboard house

in a clearing. A farmer swinging on his front porch with the wife,

so perplexed by our presence—in a slow adjustment of his own—he’s not

sure whether to offer refreshments or grab his assault rifle.