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. 

 

 

Festive

 

Festive 65 x 50 cm - Acrylic on paper c/o Karin Goeppert

JUDGEMENTS

The elephant gets out of bed, wonders

where he put his trunk. No doubt a cartoon I saw

when six or seven. Road Runner, what’s up, Doc?

Popeye’s pipe a can opener too: that ilk. It’s art,

it’s all art. Nonetheless I must tell you what I think,

mustn’t I? Tolstoy and I both loved Natasha.

Trying to imagine a double scoop of her lips

at Ginnochio’s Ice-Cream Palace, I can only visualize one hand,

surprisingly large and tipped with red lacquer, holding a sugar cone.

In your judgement, what the hell’s wrong with me?

I would observe Madame Bovary from a safe distance,  

judging and forgiving her, but not being unkind the way

Flaubert was on his beautiful-if-fucked-up mission

of “Madame Bovary c´est moi.” I’d like to say, Get over yourself, Madame.

It looks

like the kind of brown paper in which butchers used to wrap 

large bloody steaks. My wife’s painting on it. She reluctantly

asks me to give her notes. I pause, appear reverent. After all I’ve

just entered a chapel of art: chants, incense, blood-stained sacraments. 

You really got me

 

Flying my Kite 70 x 50 cm - acrylic on synthetic paper

YOU REALLY GOT ME

When I was a kid I dreamed of fake landscapes.

Jungle in black-and-white, for example,

the ape king whirling from limb to

branch as Jane fretted ( wondering perhaps

if her man would ever come

down from the trees, would ever

start to evolve) and her boy…

named Boy…Boy lost, Boy

scratch curly scalp. Boy maybe a little “slow?”   

Or is confusion a symptom

of having a generic name? Think about it.  

(Such a thought plus a couple of bucks just might

get you a double-espresso in a farm state college town. 

Think of corn and wheat. Think of soy beans,

whose odor and texture I can’t even imagine.

Think of woefully flatulent cattle.) From I don’t know  

where my sister’s transistor radio was constantly playing

“You Really Got Me,” by the Kinks—remember that one?

If you do, it’s time to check your blood pressure,

prostate, cut down on butter, red meat, Black Forest

Chocolate Cherry Cake; to dig in, hunker down, pray for release 

from ambition, lust, jealousy, the urge to smoke, the

urge to step out into Midtown traffic against DON’T WALK—

while In the kitchen where nothing’s dire Pamma always   

prepping leg-of-lamb, conjuring  

undulant pastureland in Ireland or Scotland, saying

“Kenny, you will never be a nine-to-five man.”

O Pamma, what hast thou wrought?

And now it’s

the Sahara starring Abbot and Costello

in legionnaire drag 

and I’m there too. Standing on a nearby sand dune

is Mr. Carpenter, our school principal and archetypal a-hole,

tapping the palm of his hand with a

perforated paddle. The man knows everything

there is to know. A “little bird” has told him. A tiny feathered Fink.  

Just another paranoid afternoon in autumn

 

Autumn is Yellow 100 x 80 x 1,8 cm - acrylic on canvas

JUST ANOTHER PARANOID AFTERNOON

Not the best day of my life.

One look at a crowd torn by indecision,

maybe hostile, “Are they like for us or against us?”

Pink Floyd might have set

some of this to music; mom, dad,

viciously festive relatives,  random well-wishers

all urging me to blow out the candles or

they’d chop me up into little pieces. What they failed to tell me

when I was a kid: strangers are almost always strange. And

everyone’s a stranger. Think I’ll duck out of this party. Well, an elfish girl

whispers, I’m not here to turn you on, but I’d stick around if I were you.

I know there’s a chair out of which I’ll have to struggle.

There always is.

Can’t help but remember climbing up one of those

tall buildings in the Financial District for a job interview.

Too gorgeous for words but scary assistants in their secretarial cockpit. I, sunk

in a chair very close to the ground. Knuckles dragging deep-pile or was it shag?  

Beige-haired boy/man in a baggy suit striding forcefully

toward me, half-hearted arm sticking out, eyes empty

as any sky above Needles, California, handshake

notable for its lack of quiddity. I have to leave this party,

sweet girl. And no, I didn’t get the job. Out on the wet windy streets

of Stadtmitte—German for downtown—a puzzle of trattoria and vegan bistros.

Obviously no one’s thrilled to be out. Every door is an exit.

Entropy

 

Axelmannstein 100 x 80 cm / acrylic on canvas - c/o Karin Goeppert

ENTROPY

He used to tool around

on his vintage Vespa

with his Korean girl friend

now she’s gone and he’s

leaning over his walker somewhat

surprised by it all staring at my wife

the one thing that hasn’t changed

about him he likes small women

she says because he’s small

and now he’s even smaller

the trees look like they’ve aged

about fifty years in this heat

too shriveled up like bacon

and the wine dealer’s losing his jawline

in folds of whiskery flesh still

we haven’t talked in about

ten years because I think he’s

an unrepentant asshole

and although physical erosion

hasn’t added to his appeal he is

after having dumped his wife and two kids

fucking a lanky yoga instructor

told you he was an asshole

but here I am anyway trying to

lever indignation against envy

while both my knees are going kaput

slowly like they have all the time in the world

to disintegrate on their way to nowhere

and Karin’s hip and one of her knees freeze up

when she takes the stairs

like a peg-legged pirate

and what I mostly like to do

if you discount drinking cold beer

and eating sumptuous mountain food

after hiking all day is to

take naps whenever an opportunity arises

but spirituality someone says with an almost straight face

spirituality will save you every time

but is that better than a room full of English majors braiding

each other’s hair while a jukebox plays the Top Ten of our youth?