Sex on the beach

 

Peacock Alley 80 x 80 x 2 cm - mixed media on canvas

 

 

 

 

SEX ON THE BEACH

 

The word wonderful describes

being on the slow boat from

Athens to the islands. Her sleeping head

in my lap, eyelids trembling. Just yesterday

in London we were fighting. Got on/ off an airplane.

Boarded a big old rust bucket listing to starboard.

Souvlaki & bread. Plastic cup of Nescafe.

& presto we’re embedded in some magic.

 

On the boat I was reading

that a couple thousand years ago

men did the shopping & didn’t wear underpants

Socrates downloading his classic pick-up line

on a young man, “Where can I

find the Good & the Beautiful

my son?” & even getting directions there. Found them

near the Agora, spread out in the sun by an olive tree

learning the rules of logic while watching two oily  

adolescents wrestle in the dust. After, to the bath house.

 

Out where the blue of

water meets the blue of land

Athens destroyed the Persian fleet.

 

I think about Fate and Flux. But the Beautiful Goods intrude:

red sneakers, soft khaki shorts, tank-top enhanced assets.

 

A bird goes Ithaca! Ithaca! Ithaca! Then lifts off,

dropping a turd and three feathers. An omen?

 

Ships burning in the distance

are in truth pine trees enflamed by a brush fire.

 

Ten minutes from the skeletal, elegant temple of Apollo

was a cocktail called “Sex on the Beach.”

 

I still remember how that tasted.

 

 

John Updike in Bermudas

Spinster 100 x 80 x 2 cm - mixed media on linen canvas

 

 

 

THE 4th

 

It’s the 4^th, as it always is

this time of year, even the police

peaceful today handing out ice-cream to

graceful multi-hued children who have never

known public strangulation; for whom pepper spray

is something you squirt on your salad.

 

All trees are impressive here, really

big, excellent timber. There are no snipers in the branches.

And yet what if the wind fell through their leaves

then went ripping down the sidewalk  

blowing roughly one-third of Kansas

and a hefty chunk of Missouri off the map,

threatening Arkansas and impressive swaths

of Oklahoma with utter devastation? What would we do then?

 

I don’t know about you, but I would pour

another drink; let someone else deal with it. I gave

at the home office ha-ha. There’s plenty on my plate e.g.

“Next Door Liz” has just flashed me. Or am I hallucinating? Nope,

she gives an encore: up with the sun dress—no panties—

then down again. Another perilous day in the bush, my dear Livingston.  

Yo, Liz. Wassup? Such exuberance reminds me

of the 60’s. Depravity in the burbs redux; John

Updike in Bermuda shorts. True, Stockholm refused

to give him the Big One, but he did have fabulous legs.

 

 

 

Renegade

 

Abtrünnig - Renegade 100 x 70 cm - mixed media on craft paper

AFTER THE RAIN

A woman approaches you

through the rain.

Dragging shaky fingers 

down her wet hair.

Doesn’t seem to know umbrellas exist.

Possessed

looking

clear through your eyes

all the way to the back of your skull:

you ask yourself what she sees

up there if not lust and wonderment?

Very predictable. Still, the

critics love it, and the people clap.

There’s a scene in “The Year of Living Dangerously”

when Sigourney Weaver moves zombie

like through the Jakarta monsoon

toward an unsuspecting Mel Gibson.

She seems stoned on a self-concocted

chemical substance, i.e., transcendent.

And you know

they will crash through a road block, escape to the highlands,

that the rebels will end up

crushed by the dictator’s army.

And you know

none of this will matter

as much as that woman

possessed

who

approached

you

through

the

rain.

Who wants to rule the world?

50 x 50 - mixed media and collage on canvas - available!

A GLASS OF SHERRY AND A FEW OLIVES (AMOR FATI)

                                                                    

By age 23 not a word of Jane

Austen had entered my brain. I was waiting

for some girl’s olive-textured laughter

to rise up through the orange trees of Cordoba.

There was no girl. With olive-textured anything.

I might recognize that earlier me approaching

but I’d hesitate to ask what’s up. I kind of know already.

Sullen and unappreciative, he’d probably want

to know what’s coming his way, what little disasters to

dive head-first into, what pleasures to miss by a pubic hair.   

Just kidding.

Maybe I’d tell him about Kiera Knightley’s

smile in “Pride and Prejudice,” the way

it splashes its light all over

Mr. Darcy’s miserable, besotted face.

Or that travelling in Europe on twenty-bucks a

day is like subsisting on bread sticks and tap water

in the world’s largest gourmet food court. I remember him

stealing croissants just delivered to a café in Avignon.

He knows what’s going on. Hunger sharpens awareness.

Glass of sherry, a few olives. I think he’s

hoping I’ll buy him dinner. Cordoba, Andalucia,

Spain, Europe, the World. His understanding of it all

limited to the occasional stoned intuition, plus a mild case

of Dunning-Kruger effect. We make fleeting eye-contact,

trying hard not to love each other too much. 

Strangeheart

 

It's up ahead 50 x 70 x 2 cm - acrylic on canvas

STRANGEHEART

Okay, I admit it, I’m a man.

What’re you gonna do about it?

In a dream

I’m chasing the city’s hero a

round archaic walls, an arrow

dipped in poison chasing me. “Well,

one thing you don’t suffer from is

low self-esteem,” chuckles the doctor. I am a man

I trim a little fat from the steak feed

it to my black lab. The women atop the archaic wall

s are wailing, previews of rape and servitude

circling their heads like hornets on fire.

“Oh God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market place.”

Roger that. Want me to pick up some milk on the way home?

Trim a little fat feed it to the lab. Shiver in the duck blind.

Wade through wet grass in jump boots. Put the barrel in my mouth

before God-knows-who-else does. Tear the heart out of my own chest

only to find someone strange got there first.