Spring Sessions

Spring Sessions II 50 x 70 cm mixed media on craft paper

ASSESSING THREAT LEVELS

The air is thinner than expected.

But the views are a spectacle.

How we got this high is a secret.

Some information is better left unshared.

Everyone’s eyes seem peeled for the other.

All the floors are carpeted. The wallpaper has stories.

Wagon wheels, cacti, Indian warriors and their

taciturn squaws. The quintessential medicine

man in a child’s room. Muse of chaos his wife.

Muse of chaos? I think it was the medicine

made me say that. I’m not sure that would

play well at a dinner party in midtown

Manhattan or even Brooklyn. And the suburbs

would look on dumbfounded. I’m more or less convinced

our neighbors wouldn’t want us here. People being suspicious.

Their eyes always peeled. Suspicious or

totally indifferent. Sometimes I’d prefer suspicious. At least

someone’s paying attention then. These days people

are so many things. Whatever these days are. You peel them

like every other one. Then wait for the water to boil

suspiciously. Not too much information please. Not here. Not now.  

The mountains, The mountains

The scary Climb 40 x 30 cm mixed media on paper

MOUNTAIN LOVE

What can you say about mountains?

That you can’t fit them into a phone? But, look, you can.

When I’m on top of one of

them I’m a little high because I’m short

of oxygen after the climb and take huge

gulps of air to compensate, a pulmonary phenomenon  

Brad Pitt coolly elucidates in “Fight Club.”  

I’m inspirationally

high…sometimes. Other times I’m somewhat numb, a little

detached, wondering what kind of beer I’ll have with

my schnitzel when we’re gemütlich and sleepy in town. And

I’m wondering but it’s no wonder they put cheese on everything

in the Gasthäuser; emmentaler, greyerzer; bells clanking

lethargically when the cows lick their muddy hides, their

tongues, great pink saliva laced slabs, reaching out, touching you,

like an old commercial for long distance phone calls.

Some of the higher peaks here look like

they’ve been in a fight, are gorgeously deformed.

Others have grass growing on steeply slanting faces, softening,

but still irredeemably aloof. They will not be walked upon.

Music to accompany these writhing piles of rock shouldn’t be Wagner

or Strauss. I would prefer the Miles Davis of “Kind of Blue”

or something tense but quiet by Charles Mingus. Water breathing   

out cold air as it falls; music so cool it almost can’t be bothered.

Barbarians

Pirouette 50 x 50 cm acryl on canvas by Karin Goeppert

BARBARIANS AT THE GARDEN GATE

In my dream are lines of coke.

In the old fashioned bottles.

Who can resist coke in the old fashioned bottles?

And castle dungeons with wall-to-wall

and big soft pillows plus baby oil  

or one of those Majorcan golf courses complete

with slender girl caddies in Catalonian attire—

but there are huge speakers out of which

ooze the greatest hits of Wham! which makes

me want to track down and punish the deejay—

plus car sickness and enhanced coercion: “If you

don’t shut up we won’t stop for tapas.” In other

words, the perks and ills of civilization. So I depart this dream

and welcome other barbarians, dinner guests,

visiting relatives, bullying past Maginot lines

of good behavior—bilious, looking like shit

after a day long ride, demanding alcohol and salty snacks.

Later, stepping out into the yard to smoke a joint, I’m

hoping for a vision of freedom, but all I can see is the back fence.

A Day in the Park

Ein Tag im Park - A Day in the Park 80 x 80 cm c/o Karin Goeppert

DIVA

In a better world,

yes, in the world of our betters

Diva’s robes are as blue as a starless night 

   coercing an uneasy elite

lit by moonlight on putting irons

into a pattern of progress then back again

to the pleasures of John Cheever ( phalanx

of whisky breathed    trust-fund dipshits    dressed in Lacoste

           shod sockless in loafers)    hints of

white collar indiscretion wedged between

                                   a suburban mansion’s mossy cracks.

Equipped with miles of floss the Feds ride in

with their Siren: strawberry blond, brooding Monica Vitti

fresh from Sorrento (circa 1966) has most of our undivided lust.

“Fuck with me,” she whispers hoarsely, “I WILL kick your ass.”

Which makes some of us rethink our initial fantasy

involving a pink motel beneath palm trees and drinks

           on the terrace, etc.

In the old days she. Are those plateaus or platforms? Go, girl

whimpers the past as she pistol whips it into submission.

I’d love to introduce her to Lisbeth as played by Roony Mara.

Pour myself a drink. Set up the sub-titles. Put all calls on hold.  

So what?

 

Der Duft des Sommers - The Scent of Summer 3 x 10 x 10 cm - acryl/shellack ink on canvas - available!

AN UNATURAL HISTORY OF PROGRESS

There’s jazz in the courtyard, moonlight espresso, grandma

issuing dire warnings in archaic dialect, grandpa

sneaking off to the boiler room, to conspire with tobacco.

The streets are without porn.

Bump and grind if you can find it, yes, but no porn.

A manhole hissing fiercely nearby. Kids playing stickball, but gingerly,

for it is Sunday, and they are wearing their best.

Plague germinating on rotting hulks in Sythian ports,

sailing on to Naples and Palermo, devastating Rome,

depopulating Florence, shutting down theatres in London.

Peasant and lord scarfing raw garlic and, as if longing

for their bacterial beginnings, washing neither bodies nor garments,

a mad flurry of Ostrogoths or Visigoths

spilling over city walls, smashing monasteries, no one bathing

for hundreds of years, Donald Trump always

coming back to take more, castor oil, chemo therapy

which just kills you more slowly than cancer, it seems,

public executions family reunions Hitler and his Huns

Bush #2 and his version thereof, chronology a side issue at best—

   shit just keeps happening—

until: a shriveled, oily hot dog in a soft bun at Woolworth’s

on a Saturday afternoon, circa 1968, Concord, California

one hundred degrees outside, not much cooler inside,

the air salty and dark, an odor of rancid butter

coming from the pop corn maker, add to that a

purloined copy of “Ring” magazine,

George Chuvalo and Buster Mathis

pounding each other on its front cover,

snug and damp beneath t-shirt and jeans, and I feel

well-fed, with half my “dog” in hand, and as cunning as a gangster:

thus progress makes its belated appearance in human affairs.