Pink Lady 50 x 50 cm - mixed media on canvas c/o Karin Goeppert
NEW, TENDER, QUICK
If you don’t like the cobblestones, if they seize your
needle thin heels when you walk across them,
then get thee to Euro Disney. Some women here
look like gothic statues in an East German church.
Beautiful mothers, in sandals and white socks. There’s
a classic photo of one of them, a “golden hair Margarete,”
sitting on a curbside, blowing a bubble, wondering
if there’s fresh fruit in the stores. Hayrick. Manure ditch.
Skin head revels. Where, in the thought experiment
of a NAZI BRAIN, a rich lefty is nailed to a swastika,
his Tesla smashed by a detachment of the Waffen-SS.
Later that day, I read in a letter written by Elizabeth Bishop
“My outlook is pessimistic. I think we are
still barbarians, barbarians who commit a hundred indecencies
every day of our lives…” my nostrils flaring
to cooking odors from a nearby food stand. And presto, life smells
like curry sausage and fries. Could be worse. Also, life can smell
shall we say interesting as I rise past the locked doors
of drinking associates and insignificant others. Also, fugitive thoughts
cowering in a manure ditch. Hayrick under which evil lurks
knee-deep in blood
“…but I think we should
be gay in spite of it, sometimes even giddy—to make life endurable
and to keep ourselves “new, tender, quick,” (George Herbert).”
Near the river’s edge, a black lab rolling in sand. Two boys and three girls
emerge from brown water. Happy, watchful. Light in their hair.
