La Mer

Maritim - Maritime 80 x 80 cm acryl/oilpastel/spraypaint on canvas by Karin Goeppert

SOMETIMES LESSER, SOMETIMES BETTER

There you are being pushed

   along the coastal path

by an eighty-mile an hour wind,

mouth hurting from smiling so hard.

Your spirit, escaping, races around

   like a balloon cut loose

at a child’s birthday party

but remains in your body because

frankly it has nowhere else to go.

On the umbrella pines, which are

leaning away like boxers on the ropes

who want to fight back but cannot,

   is light

the color of good English marmalade.  

The wind is

spitting wads of foam all over

   a disappearing beach. Meanwhile

Just three miles away in an atavistically

   smoky room,

a woman whose smile, without light,

has declared her absence, returns briefly

to show amusement  

   as your sometimes lesser, sometimes better self

shifts groaningly its fat ass from one side

   of a barstool to the other.

Baby Sitters in September

September 50 x 40 cm mixed media painting by Karin Goeppert

THE BABY SITTER

Getting someone last second to give a twelve minute speech on

“construction engineering issues with special regard

to Stalinist era high-rise housing in East Berlin”—impossible.

Maybe you remember (or probably don’t)

Gerald R. Ford? When Nixon was going down

in flames his idea of preemptive revenge

on an ungrateful nation was to replace his corrupt

Vice-President (the wonderful Spiro T. Agnew)

with mediocre “Gerry” Ford (i.e., Nixon’s successor), a man

who became famous for losing his footing—

tripping over the trains of fine ladies’ gowns

at state receptions. Stepping out of Air Force One

while waving at the adoring masses and not stumbling

at the same time was a considerable feat for Gerry. Apparent

physical ineptitude became his signature, his prop, his claim

to a personal style, like Roosevelt’s smile, Clinton’s cigar.

Still, if you keep

recent presidential history in mind, he didn’t do a bad job—

sub-zero expectations and no daddy hang-ups.

So, the next time you’re looking for a baby sitter

(as hard to find as construction engineers)

you might do worse than a tattooed girl

with tongue stud, red eyes, chronic sniffles. Behind

that blank gaze—which isn’t even a gaze, which isn’t even  

an empty stare on a subway platform at midnight—

so alienating that she looks indeed like she’s from

another planet—and beneath a voice flattened by tons

of post-modern urban nihilism—

affection just might be waiting its last chance,

responsibility and good citizenship their renaissance.

And standing next to her, a lump

of pierced boy-meat, a moving pattern

of crystal meth ticks, is breathing through his mouth.

Drastically pint-sized, wiry as a garrote,

is he not an Eagle Scout incognito?

Beethoven's Third Symphony, 4th movement
Danmarks Radio SymfoniOrkestret - Fabio Luisi