Kali in the Suburbs

 

The Grasp, acrylic on canvas, 70 x 50 cm, c/o Karin Goeppert

 

 

 

KALI IN THE SUBURBS

 

I adore afternoons that have the feel

of a violent crescendo, building slowly. There’s an

aren’t-we-all-having-fun American tension

in the air so thick one can chop it  

with a machete. It’s hot, we’re all eating shrimp.

Florida humidity, mosquitoes feasting, the animal

empire striking back. A fat uncle smoking his Cuban stogie,

and not one bug bothered by its odorous cloud.

 

Live dangerously is my motto. In this country it’s hard not to.

I love to stumble giddy and half-naked out my lover’s

backdoor, headlights flashing on family portraits and on a  

gleaming row of weaponry in its glass-fronted case.

 

I know you feel uneasy around me. Ever so lightly stressed.

I smell evil the way you smell pheromones…

or the scent of any self-enlarging enterprise…or a whiff of vaporized

weed drifting in from your oldest boy’s

birthday bash. So here I stand in a corner of your living room,    

 

glowing like a pile of toxic debris. Imagine none other than me  

at the perfect wedding, posting photos of the ravaged

cake, the drunken groom. You don’t want to know me,

not really, nor yourself, nor how shitfaced that frat boy

son of yours was before taking the Jag

out that evening that ended so badly.

 

 

3 Scoops

 

3 Scoops 70 x 50 x 2 cm - c/o Karin Goeppert

 

WHAT HAPPENS?

 

Facing a urinal in Naples, Italy, and just as you unzip    

the dude next to you starts to play with      

his dick while peeking at yours. Dark blue suit, glossy long-

toe shoes, soft leather brief case. Christian Democrat  

with wife and two bambini at home? Instead of asking

you cope by closing your eyes, meditating on the

delicious factoid that pizza was invented in Naples.

Meanwhile I consider the body

horror in Dante’s Inferno which I think

reemerges catholically enough in Francis Bacon’s

fantasias of violence. At the Guggenheim Venice

a predaceous chimpanzee crouches atop a coffin-like box.   

His job in hell: crushing skulls like walnuts. Bacon, no doubt  

like the Christian Democrat standing at your side,  

was into conservative politics AND public latrines. Small world.

Have you ever read any of Mary Gaitskill’s tales

of sexual lunacy? Desire twisted like barbed wire. Nobody nice.

Pain the only game in town. She seems to be saying

“This is a part of life, people, deal with it.” By the way,  

the dancers up there on stage are making me

a little nervous as they carry out their rite of spring.  

Is it because they’re sacrificing a virgin

in a forest clearing? Or is it their beauty and strength? And behind

my wife’s tears—produced by a miracle

of colors conjured up by Joan Mitchell—a smile of gratitude.

 

 

Gouge Away

 

Almost Under Control 40 x 40 x 4 cm

 

ALTERNATE FACTS

 

Strolling under a jeweled sky was once

upon a time a small festival.

Not much else going down.

Nightingale solo. A few crows

bothering the corn. Drafty castle

in the far north of nowhere

in particular. Sheep in the distance.

The First Family on the ramparts

waiting for the Duke of Earl, replete

with slaughter, to return home.

Stoical duchess, blooming daughter,

pimpled heir apparent. In that cold tower,

full of life even though death pressed upon

them everywhere, pestilence, rusty nail,   

the chopping block. Just waking up

was a feast day. Today at work you were in

a meeting in which tiddlywinks and a burping

contest might have fit on the agenda.

Why not, what else, who cares?

Waking up to just another day.  

 

 

The Burning

Dervish 60 x 60 cm - acrylic on canvas

 

THE BURNING

 

Citizens of numerous

online domains…I watch you

swipe over Instagram like it’s

…well…you know…nothing.

 

You look up from your phone, notice an old man

emerging from a deep vibe, retro-enigmatic, moving

stealthily in your direction. Pretend stealth.

He wants you to be alarmed.

 

Looks like the type who would burn his papers

against a broken wall in some fragrant, bone dry,

southern land. Pornographic prose poems, diaries, letters

vicious with gossip. Released from paper, from so many significances,

 

you don’t burn anything these days. Delete mails.

Unfriend strangers on Facebook. That’s the end of it.

And no can one report

mad scribblings on the back of 

ripped open envelopes anymore.

 

James Schuyler wrote that Auden burned his papers

like a diplomat burning secret documents

while the embassy’s under siege. Now, admit it,   

you have to believe you’re pretty important to do that. 

 

 

Reverb at low Volume

 

Silent Reef 80 x 80 x 1.8 cm - acrylic on canvas

 

 

REVERB AT LOW VOLUME

 

To your left

a threadbare curtain, swelling

       in the breeze, a purple sail

under which, you briefly imagine, Cate Blanchett’s  

eying her lover on the Royal Barge. How retro! On paper

are words that would bore anyone to death, which means

                all bets are off, you have NOTHING to say.

Oh writer, oh poet, make yourself useful, take out the garbage

      at least. Follow your nose next door where 

           fat ribs on a neighbor’s grill sizzle, his taciturn     

                 wife, plump as a burrito, swiping her phone.

       Finally, the meaning of life—and it’s… food? Food offered

by a woman whose smile says there’s no trouble in the world.

              Or is it the locked-in Mardi Gras of a smart phone? Or is

      it October light in this garden, lovely and dark-rimmed?

   I mean it is dark, almost black, BEHIND the light.

          There’s no way into something new but to switch on the lights

and watch—with relative compassion or mild

sadic curiosity—the cats—pretty, long-haired psychopaths—

                             cornering a suicidal moth. An innocent

hits the off switch, but soon we hear the growl of success: of course,

                  the gorgeous fuckers can see in the dark.  

 

 

 

 Edie Brickell - Good Times