States of Mind

Herbstbusch - Autumn Bush 50 x 60 cm Acryl/Oilsticks/Oilpastel

AIRBORNE

We’re not even airborne yet

and they offer us a sedative—a mix

of white wine and carbonated water.

Eighty-three passengers are pretending 

they don’t have to burp,

whispering excuse me every 20 seconds

through tightly clenched fists. Please

raise that plastic shutter, thank you, and while you’re

at it could you give me a massage? Absolutely nothing

would agree with me more right now 

than a strong shot of uncomplicated pleasure

and as fast as possible. Such was Thailand.

On the beach. A roofless palm-thatched hut.

Slicked with coconut oil and pulled up to

heaven by the shaft of life. Amen. And now?

There’s a lump in my throat, and it’s difficult to swallow

air, saliva, anything. Just sit back and feel free, a voice advises, 

to feel the snake of feeling that coils around your neck

till you can’t breathe anymore, till you can’t even tell

you’re not breathing anymore, till some exhausted intern

in an understaffed urban emergency room

pronounces me dead, and who, when he turns his

slump-shouldered back, I give the slip

and live to die another day. Numbers call us to air.

Distractions: behind every smile—plots, puzzles,

a tiny nest of deceit. Believe nothing. The girl who

spills her wine spritzer in your lap? She smiles; but instead

of paranoia—a vicious plot to get you wet, or mere accident?—

in your heart

there wells up a great wave of peace,

plenitude and delusion. Believe everything. Shit, why not?

And we’re not even airborne yet. 

One - Aimee Mann

Misty Mountain

Hagebutte II - Dog Rose (Rose Hip) II - 39 x 39 cm

IN BAYERISCHZELL

There’s something archaic

about this, not old fashioned,

cold foggy air, mist, always

moving, wearing a spicy

tannenbaum fragrance, mixed with pine

it’s not like shopping or office work

and if I ever see another fucking computer

and something else, undefinable, a twinge

at the back of the mind, or down lower

where the hypothalamus talks lizard

to an uppity but all too impressionable

cerebral cortex, you’d think, and this, as we

are hiking the rim of valley and mountain’s

foothill, the long lonely way down, my big toes hurt

and even before we can discuss, label, file them  

certain feelings flare up and then die out, hardly felt at all

and sometimes we spot through the shredded clouds

the wood-balconied inn in whose antlered hall

I will eat Zwiebelrostbraten and fried potatoes

and drink at least two glasses of beer, and Karin

will dine on fish and potato salad, the light

of our candle flaring out while I observe a

woman absently staring back at her husband’s

absent stare, the long

lonely way down, a waitress bending her rosy shoulders,

clean blond head and plump cleavage

forward, like a serving girl

in a genre painting, to re-light our candle. 

4 Non Blondes - Misty Mountain Hop

Time

Hagebutte - Dog Rose 39 x 39 cm

CHANGES

Let’s go to the movies

and be someone else for a change.

Self is a burden, we are restless,

we are human, we are restless.

Brad and Angelina let’s be them for a while

or a good not merely good looking Gregory Peck

in To Kill A Mockingbird, a man who does his utmost

and says Yes Sir in such an emphatic fashion

that he must be ironic (right?) but we know that

irony isn’t what he’s about he’s about Justice

is celluloid proof that liberalism ennobles

and I would love to be Warren Beatty in Shampoo

he who manages to have sex with an especially obtuse Republican

businessman’s wife, his mistress and his daughter

—talk about hat trick, talk about Triple Crown—

who’s played by Carrie Fisher, masterpiece of a

precocious high school senior in blue jean cut-offs

or classic tennis whites I don’t remember exactly

who consumes contraceptives and aces physics French

chemistry and is bound for Stanford where she’ll go to bed with

only those professors who can actually teach her something

new which is a mix of back story and conjecture and wishful thinking

and has nothing to do with the movie I would like to be in

and then there’s the The Big Lebowski of course the

“Dude” not brilliant by a long-shot this slacker’s slacker

enthusiastically addicted to bowling and White Russians

and yet he’s almost a new category of human being

complete and perfected in his not entirely indispensable

uniqueness & I’d like to be Michael Corleone

when he finds his vocation & dons the mask

of cold judgment as one of his henchmen leans

forward & whispers in Al Pacino’s (Michael Corleone’s) ear that

all of his rivals have been rubbed out, which is good, they’re a nasty lot

& Pacino looking impassive and utterly Sicilian like fate

itself walking out of an alley-way in Palermo flipping a coin

a young man, probably in his late 20’s, and that’s the contrast

that makes it stick, relative youth crossing over to the Dark Side

which is not a good place to be but a place we like to visit

sometimes because we are restless and we are human, we are restless.

To Kill a Mockingbird

Opening Credits - composer Elmer Bernstein

Mysterons

Rot und Grün - Red and Green 50 x 20 cm acryl/collage by Karin Goeppert

SUPERNATURAL

In order to stay in the good graces

of God you go to incredible lengths

of servitude and inconvenience

even transporting the Sunday school 

brats in that dilapidated station wagon 

your atheistic step father left you in his will  

as post-mortem revenge, as if knowing what   

sort of missionary use you’d put it to,

six little heathens practicing  

a version of human sacrifice in the back seat.

Now if this doesn’t get you a first class ticket

to heaven, there’s nothing left to do but pray  

while cicadas, inspired from On High, cackle in the wind.

If there was such a thing as ghosts they’d play poker on the roof,

smoke our stash, tap into our booze supply, grind

chips and dip into the carpet. One of them of course

would have to be addicted to snuff, leave empty coke cans

everywhere full of brown spit. He would be the one who

left the blue-grass red-neck records out of their sleeves

and all over the floor. Ghosts don’t haunt

                                                      so much as plague. And what’s

worse: not even God can kill them: they’re already dead.

Witches still exist. Today you can see them sashaying

atop perilous designer heels, not brooms, long clean hair shining

on the pallid beaches of Maui and Mykonos  

and not only do the waves gasp and froth, the wind breathe

in fits and starts. Trust me, bro, not only the waves or the wind.

But the only man who has their ear whispers

wicked things therein, the right spells, a promise of tickets

as he gently squeezes your nipples, darling,

to the coolest award shows in town( he looks a little

like Jack Nicholson, circa The Witches of Eastwick,

the same shit-eating grin, the dark glasses), which is all we’re interested in.

That, and how high our shoes can get, in every shade of

witchy pastel, every ice-creamy warlocky hue. The world looks on, spellbound.

Mysterons by Portishead