3 Scoops

 

3 Scoops 70 x 50 x 2 cm - c/o Karin Goeppert

 

WHAT HAPPENS?

 

Facing a urinal in Naples, Italy, and just as you unzip    

the dude next to you starts to play with      

his dick while peeking at yours. Dark blue suit, glossy long-

toe shoes, soft leather brief case. Christian Democrat  

with wife and two bambini at home? Instead of asking

you cope by closing your eyes, meditating on the

delicious factoid that pizza was invented in Naples.

Meanwhile I consider the body

horror in Dante’s Inferno which I think

reemerges catholically enough in Francis Bacon’s

fantasias of violence. At the Guggenheim Venice

a predaceous chimpanzee crouches atop a coffin-like box.   

His job in hell: crushing skulls like walnuts. Bacon, no doubt  

like the Christian Democrat standing at your side,  

was into conservative politics AND public latrines. Small world.

Have you ever read any of Mary Gaitskill’s tales

of sexual lunacy? Desire twisted like barbed wire. Nobody nice.

Pain the only game in town. She seems to be saying

“This is a part of life, people, deal with it.” By the way,  

the dancers up there on stage are making me

a little nervous as they carry out their rite of spring.  

Is it because they’re sacrificing a virgin

in a forest clearing? Or is it their beauty and strength? And behind

my wife’s tears—produced by a miracle

of colors conjured up by Joan Mitchell—a smile of gratitude.