Ghosts

Ghosts - 60 x 80 cm acryl on canvas

GHOSTS

                                                                                                                  

Sometimes I see one

or two of them, coming literally

out of nowhere but doing quite

ordinary things like, as is routine

here in Berlin, dancing around dog

shit on the sidewalk, a seriocomic

ballet of evasion, or pretending

to contemplate a shop window.

Then I’ll spot the giveaway: this one’s

missing the tension that once gave life

to Eva’s face, or the damp sheen of awareness

in her eyes; and that particular pseudo-apparition’s 

wearing shoes that Jonathan, whose sense of style was not

so much acute as World Historical, wouldn’t be caught

dead in. They usually arrive with a grip on

my heart and lungs, can’t catch my breath, feel like there’s

a balloon in there gradually expanding. A real ghost

doesn’t haunt the streets of Berlin, but lives in the mortal soul, is

an indelible moment such as when my grandmother reached

out to me through a fog of terminal morphine,

the door of her hospital room

open, I, seventeen-years old,

standing in the corridor as I turned away,

too sad and frightened to touch her,

too utterly abandoned to say good-bye.

Requiem by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Herbert von Karajan conducts The Wiener Philarmoniker

Roots

Verwurzelt - Rooted 23 x 30,5 cm

AMERICA’S DREAMING

One day it must have been the other

day I was talking to a guy in a bar

harsh daylight outside, inside as dark

as a mine shaft with neon beer logos 

lighting the way to alcoholic oblivion

and I was trying to remember Ingmar Bergman’s

camera man, his name, not the grace

and intelligence of his artistry, only his name,

when I by the way asked this guy what he did for a living.

Just passing through, he answered, just drifting by.

Well, right-on to that, I said, and we bumped fists softly.

Sven something, I said, slapping the bar.

He’s the camera guy.

The Swedes have contributed

mightily to this country, the man whose

name I didn’t know said. Let’s not

forget the Irish, I countered, gentle but firm,

their unerring sense of music and unprecedented mastery

of what is essentially the language of their oppressors.

A strangely aborted wet sound filled the air as the barman

tried to soak up some spilt beer with a dry sponge.

So much of what we say, the man said, is inconsequential.

That’s why people everywhere prefer to dream.

Just outside the Pottery

Barn in Vermont, or the Cheese factory

in Wisconsin, or the Edible Complex in Oakland, they’re all dreaming.

On a flight between LAX and Houston two manic-talking

bloated business dudes, each taking a breath, pausing  

to observe the finely articulated bottom and hips of a passing stewardess,

are dreaming too, even when they’re wide awake at 30,000 feet up.  

 3rd movement, New World Sypmphony by Antonin Dvorak

conducted by Herbert von Karajan