RESPECT

Harbinger 100 x 120 x 1.5 cm acrylic on canvas

TUSCAN ORDEAL

Netherlandish neo-pagans come here for

the Madagascar Hoopoe, a striped bird

with an umber head that looks like a helmet, and  

a long thin beak. It doesn’t sing or moan or whistle—

it shrieks as if someone has pissed it off.

The first time I heard one I thought some

Netflix spawned man-eating

creature had crawled up

to the side yard of our rented house:

rows of vines, olive trees flickering from white to pale dusty  

plush green. Then back.  Productive landscape, food factory.

Peasants must think we are nuts to come here

and watch them work. I try to picture leathery

farm hands with big white teeth pulling up in a tour bus

in front of a manufacturing facility, a chip-building campus

clutching meal tickets and smart phones. That’s us, in reverse.

Warm grass blades pricking my bare feet.  Late afternoon

and I’m in pajamas, sipping, I kid you not, a G&T.  Across the street

are three farm workers taking a break beneath a massive cherry tree,

observing a dork in his jammies at five PM. They’re intimidatingly

detached about it all. To add insult, two Madagascar Hoopoes

shriek from a shared tree limb. A blond woman in very short shorts

jogs by.  Doing what workers everywhere would do

each man gives his crotch a subconscious squeeze,

sending signals from his literal lap top. I have another sip.

In five days I’ll be teaching the gerund.

The present perfect progressive.

In five months I’ll know for sure I can’t go on.

This is known as the grammar of small despair. 

Send me no doctor

Continental Drift 25 x 30 cm acryl painting by Karin Goeppert

SOME PEOPLE I’VE SEEN

Yesterday, for example, saw a woman

whose face went back and forth

between fear and bewilderment.

I’ll never know her troubles,

I thought. And what could I offer, if I did?

“Sex,” whispered the male imperative, psychopathically

serene as ever. Then enlightened self-interest slash good manners     

kicked in with: “Don’t stare, it’s rude. Mind your own business.”

When I looked at her again, she was smiling, on the verge of laughter.                                           

                                        And what’s up with the 

man who camps out in the park most nights? I’ll never

get close enough to figure him out. An exchange   

of words though might be like slithering face-up under

miles of barbed wire. No way out. However if you    

are living in a park, psychology no doubt’s been stripped

down to finding shelter, a bite to eat. But what about those

potentially reflective moments when he’s smoking 

a cigarette beneath his favorite tree? For his sake I hope

he mainly thinks about supply issues. Where his next 

smoke is coming from. Bottle of lager. And not cause & effect.

                                            One bright June day last year 

I spotted a pretty girl seated atop a stack of pallets on a Berlin  

sidewalk. A fashionable boulevard. And there she was eating 

from a carton of strawberries with the abandon of a voluptuary,

a libertine of fruit. But slowly, with care, every bite deeply

enjoyed, as if nothing else in the world mattered. I couldn’t stop looking.