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| Summerpond 120 x 100 x 1.8 cm - acrylic on canvas |
IN MATTERS
OF TASTE WE ARE NOT EQUAL
Amid the
rubbish a storm
has discarded
in the gun
turret of
some plump
burgher’s suburban
vehicle
is a piece
of kitsch—an awful curtain
or is it a
bed spread?
Who owned this
stuff?
And why did
they have
the bad
luck (not “bad taste”)
to get
caught up in
one of
History’s shit storms,
plague,
marauding armies, nuclear melt down?
Some
disasters are made to sound
cute. Hurricane
“Suzy,” say, or “Tina”
chaos in
red boots and a short skirt
comes to
mind
and tsunami
sounds like
a delicate
piece of fish
fashioned
by elegant Asian
fingers
into something tasty
and, even
more important,
trendy.
But it feels
bad,
it feels
like food
poisoning
on the Monday
morning
you’ve been fired
it feels
like an evil verdict
from the witch
doctor-in-chief
the array
of nauseating
treatments
he’s lined up just for you.
It’s not
easy to remain
fastidious
when blood stains
on bullet-pocked
rubble
are just
beginning to fade. Still,
there’s no
way I’m going to buy
that moth-ravaged
wall hanging
in the Sarajevo
flea market. Not merely ugly,
the damn
thing has got to be haunted.
