Ingress

Ingress 80 x 100 cm - acylic on paper

THE HUMAN POTENTIAL MOVEMENT

Scads of people inhabit the season…at the mall, no less.

Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall…Sale!

Merely people, they pretend to be something else.

Superheroes, supermodels, superstars. But what are they, really?

And what would it be like to enter their heads?

It might resemble a commercial spot for some glitzy review

downtown, song and dance, acrobatic erotica, a bit with a dog.

Not downtown New York or London, more like Berlin or Vegas

where such theatres still exist, reminders of what we’d like to forget.

Beneath the glitter, a mouthful of snap and pop, cracking like bone,

sausage or a burrito, or possibly hard candy. Maybe popcorn.

Good, because, according to marketing experts, we work out

our aggressions by chewing something that feels like it’s fighting back;

keeps random public mayhem to a tolerable minimum.

Below the chewing there’s a humming sound that increases

to the whine of a huge, insanely thirsty mosquito drilling through

layers of humiliation, slights, rejection. Sometimes

you wake up feeling like Sylvia Plath without knowing who she was.

You wannabe Jessica Jones. You wannabe Iron Man. You might even

settle for being Robert Downey Jr., or his personal assistant, like

Bowie’s PA who inherited two million after Major Tom passed away.

But even if you could score such a gig it is unlikely RD Jr.’s kicking

anytime soon though some of us wish he was in better movies. Seeking heat  

you reach out for someone to cuddle: your very own supersized love burger. 

This is not (my) America - No

 

Good Friday 25 x 19 cm mixed media on paper

The Trial 25 x 19 cm mixed media on paper

ORIGINS

The ones who came before us were

from lyrically named locations where the cheese smelled

strong and where the ladies didn’t always  

shave their underarms and hardly ever their legs

and where the common folk were hungry

most of the time except on feast days,

our ancestors having descended since then

upon someone else’s homeland with its streams

and rivers teeming with trout and other fish

and aboriginal skinny dippers   

whom we killed along with everything else that moved—

the habit of which is still with us, a great release apparently

for some of our more pent up citizens—

and measured out the land, the strongest

always getting more, naturally, though we were as ravenous 

in the end as at the beginning and always  

looking for a good deal and if we could get laid

in the bargain, then, hell yeah, more power to us—

beautiful and wild we continue to seduce who

ever catches our eye. Not unlike Bowie’s

Ziggy, we can “lick ‘em with a smile.” Every day the “Others”

push back and at the same time beg for more. “They

should know better,” utters a wised-up gnome, while his muse,

super cute but a bit of a scold, corn colored hair, freckles

and a slightly Asian cast to her eyes, peeks through her fingers. 

Modern Love

Swimming Lessons 40 x 50 cm acryl on canvas c/o Karin Goeppert

BERLINALIA

I’m out hunter

gathering food, would settle for a

KFC in this neighborhood where

Arab men smoke water pipes in front

of their second-hand furniture stores.

At a table by himself a hipster

whose beard—

wanton, almost obscene growth—

makes me want to ask

how dare you eat coleslaw given

that catchall face hair of yours?

It took Berlin five years

to figure out it would need

five more years to finish its

new airport. They’re still working

on the math: airport’s still not done.

And yet the trees, ornate, intricate,

several shades of green in damp hot

July plus opulent semi-classical facades

of early twentieth-century houses

have to make me stop and smile.

And there’s our neighbor

setting out for nocturnal explorations

of Doper Park. Supplies obviously running low.

Good citizen of Kreuzberg

helping out the local economy.

That David Bowie and Iggy Pop used to live

around the corner is vaguely cool. Less so are the dozen

versions of Sally Bowles I’ve side-stepped over the years.

I think one Liza Minneli was plenty.

Americans here tend to adopt eccentricities

that will not let them go. Dude

from Ohio likes to wear a kilt

a lapse in taste I sort of hope returns

to haunt him in later years. Attractive

young English teacher dressed as a cliché

in clinging, short-skirted, blatantly whorish black,

brandishes vintage cigarette holder

and tries to be witty. I think it’s time

to head for the lakes & mountains. Italy’s singing something

voluptuous & sweet while Greece raises its goaty voice. Switzerland

has arranged all we need, even a desire

for the clink of cow bells or the sight of

tightly braided golden hair. A break from

full body tattoos fat nose rings gargantuan beards

creased by smug smiles the sneers of belligerent bus drivers.

It’s time

to get out.

It’s time to get

out. It’s

time to get out.

But we always come back.

Invitation

Das Licht auf der anderen Seite - The Light on the other Side 52 x 36 cm

INVITATION

I used to like people, would dream about them…mindlessly…magnificent

animals is what Nietzsche called us, and I even acquired a few of my own, kept them

around the house till, half-past dead with boredom, I had just enough strength

   left to throw them out. Like most empires at a certain stage

of their decline, I dream mainly of food, small pleasures, tiny divertimenti.

And alcohol. And the wild weed I cultivate amid corn and cucumbers. But now that

you’ve wandered in…my new friend!...let’s hang out together beneath the trellis

and eat olives and feta cheese in a cucumber salad and drink retsina and smoke from

the pipe of wisdom. Maybe I’ll give you that massage I promised in a moment

of mindless lust. Let’s talk of old times we’ve never shared

because the best parties are sometimes those that have no reason to exist…like some

poems…then I’ll switch on the boogie box…can’t imagine never dancing again. You? 

Let's Dance - David Bowie