Remembering Things

 

Beneath the Surface 97 x 97 cm / 38.2 x 38.2 in - acrylics on paper

REMEMBERING THINGS

A mildly tanned Swedish girl

at the youth hostel in Menton—

you know, the one in France—strands

of pale hair corrected by long brown fingers

asking me in an accent as flat as

the great state of Kansas or Nebraska

if I ran cross-country

in high school. Oh (I’d have

said if presence of mind had

not been absent) yes, if that’s what you

want to hear, you beautiful, gorgeously so, etc.

know what I mean? But all she wanted

to talk about was her mother’s cancer

and a psychiatrically challenged brother

which was fine, I didn’t mind listening,

I’m not a bad person, but I was a

horny person, and well, you know what I mean.

The first time

I heard a sitar, “Norwegian Wood”

most of me resurfaced on the banks

of the Ganges, sprinkle of bougainvillaea

petals on a cricket pitch odor

of burning rubber a leper reaching out—saw that leper again

years later in a fresco by Masaccio:

we had reunion of sorts.

“Art-needing animal,” someone whispers.

Maybe you’re right. We do need play

and invention, have a morbid interest

in the rules of any game, and

how far breaking them will take us.

The first time I heard

a mandolin. The first time I did mushrooms

listening to Pink Floyd: totally organic

my friend said, almost sacred, kicking in

just as the opening chords of “In the flesh?”

came thudding out of his speakers

blasphemously somehow. I’ll always remember

being buzzed on caffeine, reading Proust

inch by fucking inch. Portrait

of the Artist. Of a Lady.

Of queens, retainers, sycophants. I mean

the vicious whispery maledictions too

coming from mother and her third

husband as they rampaged down the

path of Mutually Assured Destruction.

Love leaping from a girl’s eyes

when you tagged her then said,

“You’re…It.”

Apple skins left piled in sunlight.

Sharp-toothed crunch of fruit in her mouth.

The wedding cake too gaudy,

if you know what I mean, but the bride oh

she was beautiful, gorgeously so.

Walk on the Wild Side

Red Triptych 40 x 120 cm mixed media on self-stretched canvas c/o Karin Goeppert

THE PROMISE

Let’s assume it was Oscar Night

and that she was totally without clothes

posing for a selfie on a red, toe

cosseting carpet. You would think the

King of Bushair had just offered her

a bag of musk. Later, beneath a peacock

feathered canopy, she lays out a novel version

of the Four Noble Truths as an eight-fold

path to post-industrial post-Freudian postman

bent over, scratching his butt, ready to deliver

final notice to anyone who has exceeded

their allotted time. You who are menacingly stupid—

he’d like to say—should know your place

or at least the address. What’s wrong with you people?

Just look how the sky shifts from bluish tinge

to rash pink to the Velvet Underground

station in London, a dozen pinpricks hanging out

on a hot night fitting tighter than a hawk’s hood

the texture, moody turnovers and smoky switchbacks

of what, for the moment anyway, we call life. Need I

go on? For your sake, dear reader, I won’t. I’ll leave you

with a promise of peace, a little elegance and a good joke  

shared with someone okay plus the rare instant 

the King of Bushair offers us two bags of musk. 

Tropical Heat

 

Tropical Rain 40 x 50 cm acrylic/oil pastel on paper

ILIAD

Weirdness draped over the family tree.

All the way down to the roots is my guess.

The Confederate general sipping tea

in his frilly parlor, handing his sword through

the window to the Union commander waiting

for it on the front porch. I wouldn’t be surprised

if he was whistling Dixie. Buffing his nails on gray wool.

The second cousin who thought her poodle

could understand 342 English words. Paternal

grandmother who kept a ragamuffin pooch

bound and gagged beneath her escritoire. For like twelve years.

Her son who wept every time he heard a 1915 recording

of Caruso singing an aria from La Boheme. Frank O’ Hara

once wrote that pissing in the wind on a New York City fire

escape was the male equivalent of a good cry. But Frank

would never have taught me, as dad did, how to disable

a man with a solar plexus sucker punch so devastating

if it fails to destroy your opponent you had better run.

He cultivated his own garden, got high on part of its yield,

choking back the burning weed, reading “The Day Of The Jackal,”

dipping into the “Iliad,” while In the middle of his garage floor a heap

of birds poached from some farmer’s land in the bitter hour just after dawn.

She came with Flowers in her Arms

 

She came with Flowers in her Arms 46,5 x 62 cm mixed media on paper

HAVE YOU HEARD THE ONE ABOUT

There are three interestingly feral  

angels sauntering up a suburban street,

flapping their Caravaggio pigeon wings,

clawing the air with dirty fingernails, and the

first one says, “Honey, get your big fat booty    

outta my face,” and the second one says, “Knock knock….”

and a nervous housewife, staring

out her kitchen window at the third angel

a hunk worthy of daytime TV she thinks

oh yum, calls the SWAT team anyway.

Three angels screaming BITCH! all the

way to the holding tank.

Basta, says the judge, you’re going down.

In a year, if they survive incarceration,

one of them will be selling mobile phones 

out the back of his vintage Toyota.

The other two, like you and me, saying nothing

or blathering incoherently, are barely managing

the daily shit storm. Are comparing tattoos in a motel room

for fun and profit. Nothing is against their religion anymore.

Even the people we think of as good, or at least ethical,

rare and tender, their innocence buckling

under the weight of soul-altering cocktails,

stare in wonder at what their words have wrought. 

With or Without You

Spring Sessions IV 70 x 50 x 1,5 cm acrylic/spray paint on canvas

DESERTION

                                          

                                                    for Oliver

Absconding angel who giveth blood once a month,

adores blue cheese on English muffin, leaves trail

of hairpins and edible bookmarks in the bed sheets,

trace of Chanel. Predictably opaque: hot coal

one second, piece of ice the next. There’s no way back.

It’s hard to believe that there’s another day.

Tomorrow, yesterday. Doesn’t matter. Any day but today.

Funny that you never visited the ruined temple

with its view of the gulf. But there’s no way back.

Poking around outside a wind starts up.

One of those talking winds, always bitching.

Scirocco, Meltemi, Santa Anna, the frigging

Mistral itself. She’s a breeze with a famous name.

And she has blown you off for ever. There’s no way back.

You feel like a figure dissolving in a sand storm.

Light sticking its fingers through the cracks

in your mind, but don’t worry, it’s still there, your mind,

more or less. There’s no way back, the wind says,

and it’s not, I repeat, not another day, though someday it might be.