Send me no doctor

Continental Drift 25 x 30 cm acryl painting by Karin Goeppert

SOME PEOPLE I’VE SEEN

Yesterday, for example, saw a woman

whose face went back and forth

between fear and bewilderment.

I’ll never know her troubles,

I thought. And what could I offer, if I did?

“Sex,” whispered the male imperative, psychopathically

serene as ever. Then enlightened self-interest slash good manners     

kicked in with: “Don’t stare, it’s rude. Mind your own business.”

When I looked at her again, she was smiling, on the verge of laughter.                                           

                                        And what’s up with the 

man who camps out in the park most nights? I’ll never

get close enough to figure him out. An exchange   

of words though might be like slithering face-up under

miles of barbed wire. No way out. However if you    

are living in a park, psychology no doubt’s been stripped

down to finding shelter, a bite to eat. But what about those

potentially reflective moments when he’s smoking 

a cigarette beneath his favorite tree? For his sake I hope

he mainly thinks about supply issues. Where his next 

smoke is coming from. Bottle of lager. And not cause & effect.

                                            One bright June day last year 

I spotted a pretty girl seated atop a stack of pallets on a Berlin  

sidewalk. A fashionable boulevard. And there she was eating 

from a carton of strawberries with the abandon of a voluptuary,

a libertine of fruit. But slowly, with care, every bite deeply

enjoyed, as if nothing else in the world mattered. I couldn’t stop looking.

I put a spell on you

On the Road (Adventure Trip Series) 56 x 42 cm - mixed media

THE BODY, THE VOICE, THE PHANTOM TOUCH

                                                                         “Gudrun lay wide awake,

                                                           destroyed into perfect consciousness.”

                                                                                  D.H. Lawrence, “Women in Love.”                      

It was her body that carried you off like an ambulance.

Left you feeling hollow and full at the same time,  

the heat of your nerves maxed out, melting down

the mind to its ultimate core—not like Gudrun,

but rebirthed in imperfect unconsciousness—a long look

deep into his eyes got it started. The body’s embellishments,

its choreography and subterranean fragrance

did the rest.

For the first time in your life you move through

the world as if a malign deity had her hands around your heart,

squeezing until the pressure’s intolerable,

necessary, a beautiful anfractuous annihilation. In 

such a moment you are not the subject of this poem, you  

are the poem. Sonata of raw need; thousand page 

suburban blockbuster; break-dance of the reckless heart.

You got mud on your Face

 

You got mud on your Face 56 x 42 cm acryl on paper by Karin Goeppert

EMPIRE OF THE SENSES

A day of wandering thoughts; the next  

one not a thought per se

but a dream of old Europe 

shot in the supple light of a Zeffirelli romance,

a little kitschy, I admit, but there’s

—don’t ask me why—a baroque

component as well: counterpoint, fetishistic wigs,

a maze of etiquette turning me into a

brocaded moralist: J.S. Bach in the organ loft

while Ludwig the Upteenth

has his way with a slightly damp chamber maid.

But right this instant, half past seven in Kreuzberg,

Berlin, a gang of fiddlers on the side-walk, sounding

like Serbian gypsies out to hustle the al fresco 

fork and knife crowd, those eaters of Italian desserts

who think maybe they’ve achieved happiness

for once and hope it will stick around at least until coffee—

that’s how it’s apportioned, happiness, in mouthfuls and sips,

the weather about to change, and the music

moving indoors, where it belongs anyway,

where we belong, but not always,

nature calling sometimes

even when we need her. 

Adventure Trip

 

Tumbling Dice (Adventure Trip Series) 56 x 42 cm mixed media on canvas by Karin Goeppert

TUDORIAL

Glass tower, castle

holding pattern riveted

to sky, dominant, cock

like in which a cohort of courtiers

crunched by numbers, drunk on work

glances ceiling-ward as if sixth  

century monks wondering what God is 

up to in His corner office. Down the street

and tucked deeper than you can take  

in between wedges of sushi and 

designer doodads a delightfully 

frigid martini attached to a girl’s hand

sweats. A bar of soap smells like sex

and the squash court is essence of fake musk

a headhunter’s gooey patter the patois

on toast today. “You’re toast, sucker.”

Stuck in the middle of traffic far as the eye   

can detect is red. Green is not the color of money

by the wayward. Green does not mean Go

at all: get a new passport, hopscotch over to Mexico

and from there on to parts less known: that’s what it means.

Better: unless you have jail in mind don’t do it

bro lest the chopping block be thy head’s final rest.  

Period Piece

CF 1 40 x 30 cm acryl on canvas

PERIOD PIECE

The merely random doesn’t interest us anymore.

Like a Hollywood actress, its measurements never stay the same.

We’re thinking, in the short term anyway, of using fractals.

Who doesn’t feel like doing something timeless for a change?

Ride in a hay wagon rumbling through flowering countryside

and a surprise

for I think I do see Tess Of The D’Urbervilles

pinned to a lean-to 

by a savage relation.

I’d like to rescue her. But as fate

would have it—this is Thomas Hardy—

all we can do is wave goodbye.

A  middle-aged artist of trembling “equanimity amid uncertainty”

dares to mix paints on his teenaged wife’s convulsive belly.

I’d cast a younger Natalie Portman as the young wife/model.

And a much, much younger Nick Nolte as the artist. But that’s impossible

so forget I mentioned it.

Like a butterfly of rare beauty,

a soft fluffy moth, she opens her bodice. Screen test.

I despair that we’ll e’er find fractals for those

   lovely, lovely…

…a sound of brocade, lots of brocade,

ripping on the roses in our uncle’s garden.

What exactly do you mean by “negative capability?”

And where are the spider monkeys

uncle Albert brought back with him from Tanzania?

They are strangely beautiful, and possessed of a rare grace

that gives me much comfort in these troubled times.