Scorcher

38 Celsius - 100.4 Fahrenheit 18 x 40 cm

THE AGE OF AUSTERITY

O girls of Iowa, of Idaho and Nebraska,

sliding your thunder thighs through the wheat

fields of Ohio and Indiana, girl gods,

gaudy girls in an Ezra Pound

poem about big girls of the Big Ten

going out for a drive

on a humid Illinois afternoon, coming back   

five-minutes later toting bags of glazed doughnuts,

O Nancy and Sissy, Shawn and Peggy Sue

on a heedless plunge into a cataract of

empty calories, wheezing over your eats

like antique Hoovers

while we admire the Pillsbury  

tuck n’ roll of your Swedish,

of your Polish and German skin.

Lean management is like a slogan stuck to

an anorexic’s bumper,

right between banana split

and Christmas turkey, each x-ed out

with a double slash of red magic marker.

Cut the fat off everything essential

and you’re asking for trouble. Who says

our girls can be trained to go without? Someone in a dim factory

is transforming, just for them, animal fat into an edible chip.

Their mission is to ingest it. TV’s on, the remote’s ready.

Farewell lean management, au Revoir vegetable pudding.

Smooth - Santana feat. Rob Thomas

I'll pick myself up and get back in the race

Warmer Sommerwind on Mallorca - Warm Summer Breeze on Mallorca 39 x 39 cm

THE WAITING ROOM

Unfortunately I’ve been waiting for so long I’ve for-

   gotten why I’m here, who I’m waiting for. Hopefully not

the dentist or urologist. After those technicians have finished with me

   I can’t look at a pair of rubber gloves without

a shiver starting in the brain then tripping down my spine. I’m in one of those

  

   situations that remind me for the

  

   ten-thousandth time that life is

an antechamber in which, all alone, we are waiting, and in the end

   not much happens. Inside our heads, however,

the carnival is on, baby, our options are manifold, myriad, multiple sex partners

   lined up around the block, strangers seeking our autographs,

WE ARE NOT ALONE. 

T.S. Eliot was an anti-Semitic monarchist. Let’s be clear about that. He was

   a snob’s snob. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, later in life

he consorted with Bloomsbury and wore a bowler hat. He was not a nice man. Still, he

   was right on the dot when he wrote, “Most people can only

bear so much reality.” You can’t know such things and stay a nice man.

   On more or less the same, highly interesting

end of the human spectrum (I know…elitist…but…) James Joyce and

   Samuel Beckett (who reportedly was a very nice man) knew that

human beings are pretty much on their own, but this was an idea

   they liked, not only because it validated their pessimism,  

but because it gave them time to carve out of the English language some awesomely

   awesome prose, i.e., why bother socializing when you can write like that?  

Sitting in a Paris kitchen, not a word spoken for the longest time, drinking tea or

   something stronger,

   or something strong in tea,

the air reeking of burnt toast and boot black, and maybe one

   or both is smoking, who knows,

ears turned to those inner voices, an occupational hazard

   as we all know, and which makes putatively “normal” people

believe that writers are dreamy losers, oblivious to the

  

   world around them, when in fact they notice everything,

which is why they’re tired all the time, until finally one of them, as always, says,

   “Life is awful, isn’t it?”

                                           Two minute Irish smiles.

And the other is right on cue with, “Bloody awful, a fooking waste.

  

   Why even bother?” To live for the slim chance

that beauty might emerge. That’s worth repeating. To live for the slim chance  

   that beauty might emerge. A pure and perfect tenor voice could move

James Joyce to tears, and a beautiful woman or girl, even if walking down the opposite

   sidewalk, could send Samuel Beckett reeling into an hour of purest rapture.  

Frank Sinatra - That's life

Blue

Schmerz - Pain 29,5 x 21 cm

BLUE RONDO A LA PARAMOUR

I’ll take a slab of roast veal in olive oil

per favore with some lemon and rosemary

sprinkled on; and did I mention the vino rosso

something alla magnifico whatever

guaranteed to the hilt of its coat of arms

while on a windy Etruscan hillside

in the midst of several self-abusive hallucinations

cavorting among themselves near the dappled compost

heap, I, or someone like me, enthroned upon an African chair,

spot a tall naked girl, vibrantly unreal, her skin

all honey and olives in the white light as she saunters across

the desiccated grass. But she’s not your run of the mill

   pagan apparition. No.

In fact, it’s not difficult to imagine her

with a rolled up Elle or Vogue in her fist

swaying fiercely in the middle of a sagging bed

smashing against the white washed walls

   of our cheap pensione

the whining succubi of Italian night.

 

Portishead - Sour Times

Roseland New York

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Walking

Und noch einmal Heimgarten - Heimgarten revisited 38,5 x 48,5 cm

RISK MANAGEMENT

If you walk over from Camogli

to Portofino you will see people there

you won’t like and who will not like you.

Sweaty in muggy heat, wearing

cut-offs, hiking shoes, a day-pack

full of provisions(cheaper)you look

across the miniscule piazza at the rich

and their yachts the thing about

the rich you point out to your girlfriend

who’s struggling to suppress a yawn

a struggle which is

turning her face into a sort of quivering jello or pudding 

the thing about the rich 

is that they will always be with us.

A very private chorus of angels

cries out, “Bravo, bello, bravissimo!”

                                               I have bad hair,

you say, I carry my lunch around in Tupperware.

And they will always despise me for that. Use conditioner,

she advises, yawning thickly, and let them

eat off gold plate or paper plate,

who cares?

Later that evening

you are having dinner at a trattoria in Sestri Levante. She

chooses the “surprise” menu, and you, something

tasty but unchallenging. Her Primo is pasta pimped

with primary hues, her Secondo a sumptuous piece of lemon

nudging grilled sea bass. Fruit, grappa, then coffee.

The waiter looks at you with pity,

looks at your girlfriend with

substantially more of the same.

Well past midnight and back at your hotel in

Monterosso you listen to her breathe. Slow, even,

unconscious breaths. There’s a nightingale outside

the window. Deeper, further into the night

a couple is groaning, urging each other on

to greater performance, inspiring you

to reach across, wake her up, touch her into life. 

But you hesitate, wondering how she’d react, and as uncertainty

hardens, takes over, a thousand crickets reclaim the night. 

 Imogen Heap and Jeff Beck

Blanket