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.

My Earlier Life as a Vampire

Blauer Spaziergang - Blue Walk 38,5 x 48,5 cm pastel by Karin Goeppert

MY EARLIER LIFE AS A VAMPIRE

The first girl whose throat

I had designs on was one

of our baby sitters. Her plump

pale neck was studded with pretty moles.

So whenever she blushed or flushed

I felt like an oil man scratching the

sand at the edge of an oasis, simply dying

to sink my drill into that rich lode. Yes, there were

teeth marks, but I swear, your honor, I

drew not one drop of her sweet blood.

Being older now, deeply mired in middle-age, I’m over

all that, and yet…I’d go for Anne Hathaway

in a pulse beat when she plays amorous Jane Austen  

long alabaster throat exposed in gowns plunging perilously

or as Meryl Streep’s factotum (deeply V-necked sweaters)

or fetchingly short-haired Liv Tyler (all lips, eyes, but mainly neck)

in a Robert Altman flick set in the South. Ethics? I’m a connoisseur

not a philosopher—well, not really—philosophy has its attractions—

or some philosophers, anyway—the vandals, the belligerents—

and I probably won’t get a stake in the heart

so much as a classic spike heel, or its contemporary cousin

the muddy cleat of her soccer shoe. But not even that

will happen. I’ve retired. I’ll have to be satisfied with scrambled

eggs flame-thrown with tabasco, reading Nietzsche till dawn burns through my curtains.

Rosario in Gardenfever

Gartenfieber III - Gardenfever III acryl on canvas 100 x 80 cm

THE AUDITORS

                                                Now as at all times I can see in the mind’s eye…

                                                             The uncontrollable mystery of the bestial floor.

                                                                           from THE MAGI, W.B. Yeats

I see them even now

in the green light of laptops and tablets

spread sheets scrolling down their pale faces

wasted on caffeine, lips thin and dry and chapped, never

satisfied, oh yeah, that’s them, always wanting what I

don’t want to give them, like junior vampires in search of

a little fresh plasma. Gray or blue suits not quite fitting properly,

handed down, it would seem, from an equally geeky sibling

who’s worked his way up to partner by now, grasping the ins

and outs of VAT far better than he will ever grasp 

the constantly mutating needs of his wife

and who, in fact, is on the verge of leaving him for a

bar tender from Montenegro—but that’s

another story; and the women,

nerdy, snorting, with strangely sour breath,

some of them unconsciously cute

packed hard-bodied in their pin-stripe suits, stealing

from the fourth floor kitchen fridge, and without a twinge of remorse,

half of some stranger’s turkey sandwich. In the Zone finally, eyes

unraveled in cold, unflinching stare, she finds again and again

in the turbulence of ingeniously fudged figures

those controllable mysteries of the bestial executive floor.