Avalanche

Lawine - Avalanche 100 x 80 cm mixed media with coffee on canvas c/o Karin Goeppert

PROMETHEUS IN FLORIDA

He once aspired to be assistant Secretary-of-State

for Caribbean Affairs, and then he aspired

to the post of cultural attache´ in one of those

glittering gulf states famous for its opulent shopping

malls and jewel-encrusted mosque. And now

he spends his days in the bars of Tapioca Bay, Florida.

We end up on a park bench, near the

Confederate equestrian statue

whose head was stolen by frat boys in the 80’s—never

recovered; people still talk about it—position ourselves

beneath a shabby palm tree and eat the cool flesh of a mango. Slowly.

Wonder briefly about the symbolic use of a headless statue in this poem.

Then stop wondering: inconsequence dines on our spirits,  

like that razor beaked vulture, whatever her name is—

she might be German—tearing out the liver

of some Greek politician, eating it, then repeating the process,

further proof that everything sort of recurs. We are lost again

in the precincts of a fun-haunted tableau. Cuban dancers are lining up.

Girls with legs up to here. While an old man smiles at his trumpet.