Mizumi

 

Mizumi 17,5 x 12,5 cm Monoprint on paper

 

 

 

 

TALKING ABOUT THE WEATHER

 

Wind, rain and hail coming all at once

making a mess of everything that

grows here. There’s some serious flooding

so we should be talking about the weather.

But I commune with Radiohead instead

and there’s no one around to say I shouldn’t.

We can label this the upside of solitude.

The downside being I’m the only person left I

can fight. Seen from any angle this is not a win-win.

Inventory includes a blood-pressure cuff and a

new pair of shoes as stiff as a neighbor’s smile.

Some European food porn. A few dozen tattered Penguins.

If dignity is a jewel of life that must be earned

then I am sure I left mine at a pawn shop—possibly El Paso,

maybe Bakersfield. Plus I have no idea what I did

with the money I got for it except that I ended

up in a place where a good breakfast is

suspiciously cheap. There may have been a girl

on roller skates doing tricky turns in a parking lot. Everyone has  

to feel lucky once or twice in a lifetime. Everyone has to feel

that the worst thing that can happen is a bad  

interpretation of the facts on the ground—which I think

was Tahoe. When the roller-skate queen in pink knee-pads face plants

I help her up, wipe off the blood with an old tea towel,

talk a little about the heat, then offer to buy her a 99 cent breakfast. 

 

 

Give me a reason to love you

  

I didn't have a Thing to Wear 40x30x3 cm - mixed media and collage on MDF

 

 

BEAUTY TRAP

 

There we were, snaking over the surface of things, down

the cracked fresco, up the prickly pear. It was

impossible to process so much beauty at one time.

It was like being too drunk to enjoy a Brunello.

Like Stendhal, besotted aesthete, toppling in

some Duomo, we had to take a lot of naps.

But it’s all part of the job: poets have to deal with beauty.

 

The landlord kept certain family secrets

buried just outside our bedroom window.

Or was it a barely submerged septic tank?

Down in the village, a woman, with a cutting edge  

haircut, sliced thin cuts of Parma ham for our sandwiches.

 

We met a self-proclaimed humanist at the Stazione bar

whose primary credential was four years

of high school Latin. He looked like a

hipster Machiavelli. “In Vino Veritas,” he slurred dryly

while hitting on our waitress. Working one summer

in a Santa Fe convenience store he met a man who had

done a photo-essay on Sophia Loren. “He said

she was gorgeous of course but had the hands of a peasant.”

Why the “but?”

 

I hate to confess this but I wouldn’t know a peasant’s hands

If, for the mere fun of it, they slapped me across the face. 

 

 

Pride and Prejudice

 

How I spent my Afternoon 40x40x2 cm collage, mixed media on canvas

 

 

CONFESSIONS OF A MOONY

 

If you’ve ever just come to,

the moon shining

in your eyes, most likely 

a Saturday night

to Sunday morning—

substances

running riot down the length of your body—   

you’re not alone my brothers and sisters.

She wakes me up all the time.

 

Every insomniac’s 

preferred metaphor

is an interrogator’s

lamplight in my eyes

as I admit every   

foul act ever committed   

throughout a douchebaggy

botched & bungled

life, and still she won’t let me sleep.

 

She’s somewhat blurred, behind a thin membrane

of mist, like a cookie—or shortbread, just dunked

in coffee or tea—or like a girl who, knowing she’s

gorgeous, insists on your attention—

a smirking delicious cock teasing moon.

 

 

Holy Jeans

 

Skindeep - 70 x 70 cm, acrylic and charcoal on paper

 

 

HOLY JEANS

 

Back then music was everywhere. Results were mixed:

the garage band across the street never got

past the opening chords of Sunshine Of Your love.

Who was the hang up? Slowhand not slow enough?

Ginger Baker’s drum roll a little too stoned? We’ll never know.

 

On the corner of Arkansas and Texas there was,

suitably enough, a run-down ranchette, overgrown,

weedy yard, big branched red state tree

drooping out front. Within, a witch brooded.

 

Fact, humans don’t give a shit about facts: we want indecorous

drama, beautiful lies, Main Street baton twirlers. On a day after

school she rolled up popping a wheelie, a different sort

of witch, Saint Christopher necklace pendulous

from her brown neck (dirt/sun combo). Her favorite song

was Hey Jude. Why? ” Because it’s about a dog.”  

 

The older witch docked her drunken boat

of a station wagon, bag of fresh pharmaceuticals

in a death grip. The only words she ever spoke to us:

“Kindly get the fuck off my lawn.”

Which, I would suggest, was more vernacular than imprecatory. 

 

 

 

Cigarettes after Sex

 

Backstage 60 x 60 x 2 cm mixed media on canvas

 

 

 

WHAT’S NEXT TO GODLINESS?

 

When about to lose your mind

you could always meditate, or

contact the congregation’s help desk,

bend your priest’s ear, seek mullah or rabbi

or someone else holier than thou.

But most often you just crawl     

off to bed after an apocalypse

of your own confabulation (stubbing your

 

toe en route or stepping in cat vomit) 

thinking I will never get up again,

not worth it, world’s too cruel, then later

mumbling “thanks, man” to your avatar 

for orange juice and coffee. Something warm

with butter on it. A slightly rank but fluffy robe

rubbing thin skin each time you light a cigarette.

 

You live through a legendary madeleine   

event in real time when from your    

bedroom window you observe a student nurse

splashing in her own baptismal font

and who, rinsing off with a sea sponge, reminds

you of what your stepmother from North

Carolina always used to say: cleanliness is next to godliness.