Basic Black

 

Basic Black 70 x 50 x 1.8 cm - acrylic on canvas

 

 

W. T. F.

 

For about a half-hour once on a Venetian bridge

I felt like I was dying—no, not

dying, feeling lost in myself,

standing under a thousand pounds

of unnamable Dread. So I wasn’t on

one of those Death in Venice trips,

I merely felt that nothing mattered. But I don’t know why.

I’ve seen the denizens of a shopping mall in Oxnard.

I’ve seen a puddle of blood and the syringe that formed it

on a subway platform in Berlin. Not a shudder. But in Venice,

that ultimate Disneyland for aesthetes? I mean, what the fuck?

I don’t know why but I smoked for the first time

in my life on the steps in front of the train station

people lunging by on their way to Florence or Milan

or Munich, Pink Floyd playing on someone’s “ghetto

blaster”—it was the summer of “The Wall.”

And I still don’t know why

I was laughing uncontrollably while standing

in line outside a movie theatre in Pleasant Hill,

California, the heat crushing even children to silence.

Intoxicated by all that life force rushing without

hesitation or purpose through my 23 year old body,

finding it hilarious, I guess, to wait in 100 degree heat

for Indiana Jones to defeat the Third Reich. I didn’t even like Harrison Ford.

 

 

 

30 Licks

 

30 Licks 80 x 80 x 1,8 cm - mixed media on canvas

 

 

 

ENOUGH

 

Lately I prefer experience

portioned out like chicken nuggets,

i.e., in manageable chunks. Do not super-

size our life, I say, winking sarcastically

while shaving a last few stubborn hairs. 

I know some smallish towns that have

one of everything. Or two or three

or six. It’s always a question of appetite.

   Three miniscule pizzerias, say, 

   squeezed into

a baroque piazza’s mid-sized space. We know a woman

who maximizes all offers. She can leave

a salad bar in ruins. Or a man’s heart though

swearing she only wanted his penis. All You Can Eat

becoming I Can Eat All Of You. It’s possible to be

addicted to anything. Even desirable.

The third season of Madmen.  

Someone’s ridiculously attractive if sort of

scary smile. Because it is scary, because it seems

to promise more meaning than we can tolerate. Riding really

fast down a mountain side on a piece of technology

that will never go fast enough. Until it’s riding you.

Until it’s wrapped neatly around your neck.