Primary Colors

Island Hopping 27 x 19 cm

TO A WAITRESS IN A GREEK RESTAURANT

I really like your plastic bra straps.

They do something, um, just right

for your  shoulders. Is that your old man

out there, smashing an octopus, our dinner, perhaps, against a rock?

Do you like octopus?  Stupid question, of course you do. I’ll bet

your favorite movie scene is the one in which Zorba

leaps up, show-off that he is, and starts dancing

a mighty “Yes!!!” to life. Charming, and it doesn’t seem to

matter to most viewers that a Greek everyman

is played by a Mexican actor with an Irish name,

but the point is, what I really don’t want to

say but should, actually the point is, dear

girl — you can’t be older than 19 or 20,

right?—what about schedule delays,

corruption of every shape and configuration,

what about hot, mosquito-crazed 

nights in a cheap Piraeus hotel  

room with its noisy, ineffectual 

attempt at air conditioning?

An occasional slap dash of Nordic structure just might, um,

bring a degree of order(yawn, scratch)to this white-washed, creamy, garlicky

Orthodox life-style we find ourselves in the midst of,

the retsina and fried squid, the casual disregard for traffic laws,

the way a cruel sunset once stained

the white domes of Ios

a delicate, girlish pink

further enhanced by the special effects of substance abuse

and everything so cheap(at least

in 1984 when this poem, as it were, takes place)—

which leads me to the obvious conclusion that,

given a choice, I’d opt for the oral compulsive 

over the anal retentive anytime:

desire lives the anarchy of its own laws.

I’ve studied this issue. The hand that smashed

octopus against rock is now delivering

our glasses of on-the-house ouzo, and here’s my wife

just come back from the Lady’s

her face with “you bastard” written all over it,

and so I wish you a good night,

and a good life, whatever your name is, everything will be fine.

This is the future speaking. Everything will be. 

Zorba the Greek

from the movie by  Mihalis Kakogiannis

based on the book by Nikos Kazantzakis
with Anthony Quinn, Alan Bates and Irene Papas

Bella Italia

Upper Town Fiesole 30 x 20 cm

THE TREES OF LUCCA

Some of his friends

called D.H. Lawrence “Lorenzo,”

I suppose because of his love for Italy. He had

utopian fantasies about the Etruscans

who, judging from their tomb paintings,

seemed to think the afterlife was an elegant orgy.

He enjoyed long walks in the countryside, and after

didn’t mind getting down on his knees and scrubbing floors.

It would be interesting to see how Don Lorenzo would react

to a pierced, tattooed, wired-for-sound urban

proletarian riding the subway some Manhattan morning,

abundantly, inspiringly female

on her way to Columbia or the New School

for a seminar on English Modernist Novelists.

How would she react to him?

No doubt she’d give him crap about his sexism,

his laughable phallic imagery, that he sometimes punched

his German wife, Frieda, and about his endless tourism

and negative views on masturbation

which is, as everyone knows, like, a very cool activity.

The whole time that she’s putting

not only his work but his existence into question,

she’s sucking some coffee shop product 

from a cup/mug/baby bottle made out 

of a substance he’s never seen before

since it hadn’t been invented yet in the 1920’s. The fact that she

calls him “dude,” and advises that he “chill,” also is perplexing.

It might be humane at this point to send him back to Tuscany,

buy him a caffè “corretto” (espresso with a splash of grappa), and draw

his attention to the strange fact that actual trees do grow out of the towers and walls of Lucca.

O Soave Fanciulla from La Boheme

 Renata Scotto and Luciano Pavarotti

Saturday in the Park

For those who love the leafy moments in life

Dombühl 22 x 29,5 cm - 8,7 x 11.6''

 

YOU CAN’T DO THAT TO ME

says the man on a bench 

pretty much out of nowhere.

His voice is loud but sounds hog-tied.

The coppery beeches are joined

in their upper limbs leaf

to leaf and there are white chairs

on the hedged in lawns

where nearly naked sun bathers

are smoking hash and drinking beer;

what we need is an updated Renoir

to capture in drunken brush-strokes, in stoned

impasto, their pungent, carnal pleasures.

You can’t do that to me? What kind of statement is that?

Wittgenstein would have certainly

refused to consider its logic.

On the other hand, you might say,

Wittgenstein had his own problems,

couldn’t figure out if he wanted to be

a philosopher or a construction worker.

Still, the grass is thick and warm

and there’s an odor of barbecued meat

drifting past the lilacs and honeysuckle

and a sweat worm, yes, a worm comprised

of sweat, is crawling down my rib

cage and an otherwise anonymous girl 

is working with lascivious ingenuity

on a long cylindrical popsicle

like an old pro in the porn trade.

Life could be worse. Life could

be a snow storm on a train platform.

An assessment center at a Major Corporation.

You can’t do that to me? Tell that to the Marine Corps

drill instructor yelling in your ear.

Listen to that from the sucking

pig being barbecued right now by a soccer club 

already three sheets to the wind, working on their fourth.

You can’t do that to me, squeals the pig.

Watch me, says the soccer player.

One little piggy goes to the market,

and one perverse little piggy eats pork chops(alas, we know the type),

and one last little piggy 

will not run all the way home ever again.

 

Chicago - Saturday in the Park