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.

 

 

Man-Size

 

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.  

 

Jane Austen

 

Mayflowers III 40 x 30 cm acrylic on canvas

 

 

 

JANE AUSTEN

 

The neighbors’ kid drops an ounce bag in the stairwell.

For his own good you and I smoke it to fine ash.

And even with that tiny shard of hypocrisy lodged

in our sore throats (the shit’s harsh) we continue to thrive.

A day later a delivery of bottled water’s swiped from our door mat.   

 

As the philosopher said, payback’s a motherfucker. What philosopher? you ask.

 

But the kid, whom I call KING OF THE SLOTHS, is shockingly proactive.  

There’s Mega Death Metal coming down at two in the morning.

Sleep becoming yet another essential we can’t afford.

Raises the question: how did he know it was us?

 

Wolfing down a dripping kebab at midnight, a little snack

after two liters of beer. My specs are in the shop, thus

from a distance mail boxes look a lot like the brainless heads,

mounted on spikes, of our treacherous neighbors. Drifting to us

from across the street, a girl’s voice: “Bellini. BELLINI? It’s not a

painter, dude, it’s a drink!” And then, straight out of another century,

 

CIVILITY GRACE STYLE are rolling down our street in a coach-

and-four. The scene gives off an aura of countrified elegance: always a 

pleasure when lady Jane pays a call. Would it be rude of me to ask 

her to sign relevant DVDs? Or pose questions about hygiene issues  

in 19^thcentury England, or why the Napoleonic wars never figure

in her stories? Or should I just keep my mouth shut? For once in my life.

 

 

 

Youth is an Illness that time soon cures

 

Caramel Sundae 100 x 80 x 2 cm - mixed media on canvas

 

 

 

“YOUTH IS AN ILLNESS THAT TIME SOON CURES”

 

The young are screwing everything up.

They look so damn good when they’re doing it.

Actually they have no power and are drastically feckless.

Only they don’t seem to notice, which gives the skinny jerks an edge.

 

The young are a weird arctic mirage

lacking empathy and awareness of just how precarious life is.

I try to convince them they’re gonna crash into a road block  

of failure and disappointment. And not only once. Eyes empty of exper-

 

ience glaze over. A girl who doesn’t need make-up after a night out

dancing to monotonous electronic music, reaches for her phone

with one hand, a bag of vegan chips in the other, writes

some boy she barely knows yeah okay...

 

A young guy sits down next to me. He’s not wearing anything on top. Stomach

so smooth and flat he doesn’t even need a six-pack. Doesn’t even need to

go to the gym. Why sweat for a couple of hours only to take a shower

with old dudes torturing themselves to look like me? I say to him: you’re young

 

for five minutes then someone else takes your place. Meanwhile don’t trust anyone   

over thirty. Better hope you die before you get old, etc. He’s not listening, stares at his phone.

Some girl he barely knows writes: yeah okay I’ll fuck you. Is he surprised?

Relieved? Ecstatic? Not even. Smirking, he takes a selfie, saunters off to the beach.

 

 

Snap

 

Snap 120 x 120 cm mixed media on canvas - c/o Karin Goeppert

ROMANTICISM

Is Romanticism merely adolescence

extended a century longer than feasible? And does

an American Ballet Theatre gala seem to meet the criteria?

Balletomanes, long past romanticism—i.e.

not at all in touch with the sublimely unattainable

in love, faith, art—

are in the bar downstairs, smoking and drinking, waiting for the bell

and clearly more interested in bodies than in spirit.

I remember wearing torn-up yellow running shoes,

no socks, commenting loudly, “Doctors are little more

than glorified plumbers.”  Which may or may not

be true, but who cared about truth? I was all about impact.

A response from strangers of bewildered admiration.

Strangers because, well, people I knew shook their

heads, though never responded with

“Fuck you talkin´ about?” For which I’m grateful.

How old was I? Not too. Not very. Not enough.

First experience of ballet: an aspiring

Ballerina, a kinky sixteen year old, once asking

me to sit on her upright feet: the third most

erotic moment of my life.

The world was not so much my oyster

as a 24/7 drive-in burger palace

in the Berkeley flatlands, where San Pablo Avenue hits University.

Enough about me ( I hear “me-me-me-me”

echoing like the opening phrase of Beethoven’s Fifth.)

Natalia Makarova and Antony Dowell take the stage

for a short number from Manon Lescaut. No dancing,

just mime and emotion, lots of heat, panting, intense looks.

Now, back to me.

I feel uncomfortably warm while those experts

in romantic manipulation struggle with all kinds of

feeling. There’s a heater in my chest. I feel ecstatic, in the ancient Greek

sense of the word. All of this sublimity is not healthy. Neither is

using the ancient Greek sense of a word. Any word. Almost as

bad as racing home with a bag full of bean and beef burritos

and watching Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet with an equally underemployed

neighbor who, steeped in sensibility, is harmful to no one but herself.

And what flesh-eating Romantic wouldn’t take advantage of that?

After the ballet we stagger off to Ghirardelli’s

for triple banana splits, feeling more or less normal by now,

even common, even rather pleasantly stupid,

and pushing this as far as we possibly can.