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.