Kali in the Suburbs

 

The Grasp, acrylic on canvas, 70 x 50 cm, c/o Karin Goeppert

 

 

 

KALI IN THE SUBURBS

 

I adore afternoons that have the feel

of a violent crescendo, building slowly. There’s an

aren’t-we-all-having-fun American tension

in the air so thick one can chop it  

with a machete. It’s hot, we’re all eating shrimp.

Florida humidity, mosquitoes feasting, the animal

empire striking back. A fat uncle smoking his Cuban stogie,

and not one bug bothered by its odorous cloud.

 

Live dangerously is my motto. In this country it’s hard not to.

I love to stumble giddy and half-naked out my lover’s

backdoor, headlights flashing on family portraits and on a  

gleaming row of weaponry in its glass-fronted case.

 

I know you feel uneasy around me. Ever so lightly stressed.

I smell evil the way you smell pheromones…

or the scent of any self-enlarging enterprise…or a whiff of vaporized

weed drifting in from your oldest boy’s

birthday bash. So here I stand in a corner of your living room,    

 

glowing like a pile of toxic debris. Imagine none other than me  

at the perfect wedding, posting photos of the ravaged

cake, the drunken groom. You don’t want to know me,

not really, nor yourself, nor how shitfaced that frat boy

son of yours was before taking the Jag

out that evening that ended so badly.