Whupped

 

Spring Sessions I 70 x 50 cm mixed media on paper

WHUPPED

                                                              And what about women? He asks. Yes,

                                                               I think to myself, what about women?

                                                                                                Jack Gilbert

I like to watch them on TV.

She moves languidly across a suburban lawn.

Running shorts, tank top, hair in a twist;

she stretches a little, then jogs into the light.

I love to watch Jessica Jones thoroughly kick  

the sorry asses of some ugly rugby players  

who are trying to mess her up.

Who would want to hurt her, even if they could?

That meta-cool black leather jacket. Messy raven-wing hair.

Lips like some hybrid delicacy (grapefruit spliced

with strawberry perhaps) harvested every

fourth autumn in paradise. Why do I feel like a total idiot?

Soon I’ll be comparing her to a summer’s day. Only she can’t

hear me. She’s on Netflix. In the goofy hope

of a little eye contact I’m standing on the wrong side

of a body guard’s folded arms. She can’t even see me.

Had I not been born male, I’d be a girl with a thing

for flannel shirts and the martial arts, playing

softball in Berkeley and lusting after Kristen Stewart.

An asshole I know once said, “You’re pussy-whipped, dude.”

Oh really? I just like the way their minds play, “bro,” and how they

feel my pain, seem a little sad, even while they inflict it. 

High at Hyde Park

High Wire Act 100 x 70 cm mixed media on paper

STRUGGLE

You are something I’d like to climb over.

I guess we could call it “will,” the druthers of your mind

--I’d “ruther” do this, I’d “ruther” not do that--

I’d love to set it like an egg timer.

Listen to it tick—peacefully—while I stir something.

Eggs, sausage, a drop of pancake batter on my finger.

The willows are sighing softly, which is

much better than wheezing noisily.

Any omen that enhances the protocols

of the season and I’m in all the way. You have

said that too. In your better days

when talking was an item on our agenda.

The drunks have left off singing, they’re

just tired now. It’s three in the morning,

you say, and I thank you ( a little solemnly) for the update.

How did it get to be so late so early?

We are moving and standing still at the same time.

Fairly certain physics cannot mathematize this sensation.

Science was not designed for such undertakings, e.g.

Sandrine’s hair color cannot be verified.

The pipes are wheezing, and this is no enhancement.

She’s in the kitchen, fumbling with breakfast. For which she too is not designed.

Look me in the Eye

Look me in the Eye 100 x 80 cm acrylic on canvas

THE DEAD

are stored in family vaults

in Naples, Italy, in New Orleans—set afloat on some holy

river in South Asia—scattered over a bay in California—

scattered on the floor of a forest in Germany, a gum

wrapper shining through the ashes—but they’re

among us too.

Twisting the neck

of a pepper mill—dead—giving correct change—deader— 

that figment in the mirror—deadest.

You ask a few corpses to drop by

for an evening of civilized decomposition.

Zombies line up, board the boat, cross the river to be with you.

You’re taste keeps evolving

giving you hope that nothing will stop.

That you will grow out of yourself

into other selves perpetually

and onward without end

eternity waiting just for you:

which may turn out to be one of your favorite

fantasies featuring a vision of temple dancers

drifting home after the night shift;

row after row

of languid palms on either side of the street

leaning back in a damp breeze

and dreaming of hurricanes—dead certain—to come.

Selling Out

Carola 48 x 49,5 cm pastel on cotton

SELLING OUT

is a bummer for

the 70’s era pop-rock super-gods

—their latest

release turning gold even before

it hits the stores, cute little Stevie

on the cover, all big eyed and blond—so

they take revenge on their own success.

Their next album pushes past the

limits of the listenable; the critics kill it….

Bill Clinton sold, and sold again. Except for an abbrevi-

ated era when he seemed to believe  

in something French: Liberte’, Egalite’, Fraternite’—

like a fortune cookie’s prophecy folded into

a triangulated croissant

then dropped, like an orphan, on Wall Street’s door step.

Mick and David sold out

long before Angie caught them

comparing schlongs in a suite

at the Waldorf. Or did I just

make that up? Maybe it wasn’t

the Waldorf. I don’t know, maybe it was their

guitar collections they were comparing.

What does selling out mean in the worlds

of pop music, and politics,

and even religion? It’s 1375, say, and I give

my priest a cow and a couple of odorous goats

for a good word in God’s ear. Meanwhile

the sun has turned us into bones.

Bleached out, broken, scattered across the sands

until, that is, Georgia O’Keeffe

spirit-in-residence on her own Ghost Ranch,

gathers us up, places us on a shelf

with a few other bony relics. Used to take a long

time to get old. I was thirty-five at least ten years—

I thought!—and now every two or three months

little bits of me chip away. I’d sell out in a heartbeat

to slow down the rot. It’s so easy to go Faustian.

End Of Season Sale. Everything Absolutely Must Go!

Contemplate This

 

Abstract Meadow 21 x 29.7 pastel on paper c/o Karin Goeppert

CONTEMPLATE THIS

I’m trying to be a better person.

I really want to improve.

I usually only eat meat that’s been

coddled from “stable to table.”

I renounce violence at least

three times a week. Still,

I almost regret not deconstructing

my wife’s first boyfriend’s distinctly sagging

inexplicably self-satisfied face

when he dropped by for dinner

during the Great Heat Wave of 2011—

deconstruction, yeah, that’s it, between dessert

and a lovely espresso with a splash of grappa in

it would have literally hit the spot.

Therapeutically minded

I contemplate various forms

of domestic plant life. The slightly

nodding fronds are reassuringly mute

yet an orchid’s pale creamy petals

as pale and creamy as sauce

over one of those pigs, roasted now,

who, if you believe the PR department

died happy—and over Swabian pasta—

make me think of W. eating and talking

talking and eating

and all I want to do

is disable his point of view.

The world is made of ten-thousand opinions.

Whose logic isn’t exhausting? At the same time

the trees are ecstatic with birds, their

give-and-take mercifully indecipherable.

Swirling flocks of swallows

soaring and dipping in Cairo

doing somersaults in Athens, in Berlin

and there I go again—just can’t stop dropping those names.