Complaint

 

They say it's your Birthday 65 x 50 cm acrylic, oil pastel and charcoal on paper

COMPLAINT (1)

When you’re away you have to stay

clear of those statues whose fig leaves

have been chipped away by curious school girls.

And I have to cut down on cheese burgers

and grilled cheese sandwiches because of

cholesterol and salt and other poisons. It’s about

time for our Annual Relationship Audit, a Situation Report

from the Situation Room where things can get rather weird.

At the moment it’s quiet. The cats are cleaning themselves.

You’re on the couch, plugged into WhatsApp, while I’m

spreading like a puff of smoke over a back yard fence.

A neighbor’s got ribs on the grill. We seem to be

in California but it smells like Louisiana

in steam-bathed, barbecued August; a delicious

lethargic deep south vibe I don’t know all that well

though I’m jiggling my legs—spastic movements

that raise a few eyebrows— to its back country harmonies.

Sometimes I’m someone looking for a Big Idea, a ready-made

sustainable system cruising along the skyline  

like any charlatan absolute. I even read books. In the end, all

solutions are temporary. Still, until you’re home unscathed

everything will feel hopelessly permanent, and I’ll be

someone not merely solitary but vaguely menacing too.

When people spot me they’ll grab shovels or gardening shears.

Swirl

Swirl 24 x 18 cm - collage/acrylic on canvas board

BARDIC RECOLLECTIONS

Maybe we should permit

memory to make us stand

up on our hind legs and bark

for a treat, e.g., thought I was being

funny and asked my doctor to prescribe

a pizza but none of that deep

dish Yankee crap, only slices of

the real thing would do, a chewy sour-dough

crust enriched by squirts of virgin olive oil

pressed out in the hills behind Ventimiglia.

That was the trigger. You and I had some

face time in those hills or further down

the boot, in Camogli, I think, fire flies in the wood

near the Ristorante, Pavarotti’s creamy voice

drifting in from the kitchen along with

two plates of ravioli in walnut sauce. I know

it sounds too good to be true

or too bildungsbürgertumlich to be good

but I can top that: after Dolce and espresso

we could hear a nightingale’s solo and I swear

there was Shelley heading out to the sea

that would kill him, Keats already dead and

Byron lifting Shelly’s heart from the fire

in which they burned his body on the beach

then I automatically stopped barking and nurse Anna

handed me my prescription for blood pressure pills.

Nessun Dorma in a time of plague

 

Here and There and Everywhere 69,5 x 69,5 cm - acrylic on paper

 

A SELFISH LOVE POEM ( BELLEZA MALATA)

Pollen on the olive leaves again.

San Baronto, Arezzo, arrosto vitello con patate.

I want to come back to you as soon as I can.

The fattest lemon ever seen, and felt, was in Sicily.

Rolling off a garden table, it nearly broke a big toe.

I wouldn’t mind pressing my face to the nose gay

of a Milanese perfume whose fragrance rises off

the olive hued, peach-fuzzy neck of its maker’s

   elegant daughter, then lingers in a tall-windowed room.

(Ah, the old romance scam. Sounds creepy too, but it feels empirical.)

I’ve always thought that, under certain conditions, wine

without food is marginally regrettable. But food without the

rough density of a country red or a noble Brunello, what’s that?

Scarcity. I don’t like the austere. It’s too thin-lipped, hard bodied, 

empty inside, Nordic in its responses. Not at all like the peach

that seduced me once in the hills above Vinci. Leaning back

when I bit into it I still got squirted, white shirt wrecked.

I don’t know how much of you will be left but when

you feel better I’m coming back to love every region of you.

Festive

 

Festive 65 x 50 cm - Acrylic on paper c/o Karin Goeppert

JUDGEMENTS

The elephant gets out of bed, wonders

where he put his trunk. No doubt a cartoon I saw

when six or seven. Road Runner, what’s up, Doc?

Popeye’s pipe a can opener too: that ilk. It’s art,

it’s all art. Nonetheless I must tell you what I think,

mustn’t I? Tolstoy and I both loved Natasha.

Trying to imagine a double scoop of her lips

at Ginnochio’s Ice-Cream Palace, I can only visualize one hand,

surprisingly large and tipped with red lacquer, holding a sugar cone.

In your judgement, what the hell’s wrong with me?

I would observe Madame Bovary from a safe distance,  

judging and forgiving her, but not being unkind the way

Flaubert was on his beautiful-if-fucked-up mission

of “Madame Bovary c´est moi.” I’d like to say, Get over yourself, Madame.

It looks

like the kind of brown paper in which butchers used to wrap 

large bloody steaks. My wife’s painting on it. She reluctantly

asks me to give her notes. I pause, appear reverent. After all I’ve

just entered a chapel of art: chants, incense, blood-stained sacraments. 

You really got me

 

Flying my Kite 70 x 50 cm - acrylic on synthetic paper

YOU REALLY GOT ME

When I was a kid I dreamed of fake landscapes.

Jungle in black-and-white, for example,

the ape king whirling from limb to

branch as Jane fretted ( wondering perhaps

if her man would ever come

down from the trees, would ever

start to evolve) and her boy…

named Boy…Boy lost, Boy

scratch curly scalp. Boy maybe a little “slow?”   

Or is confusion a symptom

of having a generic name? Think about it.  

(Such a thought plus a couple of bucks just might

get you a double-espresso in a farm state college town. 

Think of corn and wheat. Think of soy beans,

whose odor and texture I can’t even imagine.

Think of woefully flatulent cattle.) From I don’t know  

where my sister’s transistor radio was constantly playing

“You Really Got Me,” by the Kinks—remember that one?

If you do, it’s time to check your blood pressure,

prostate, cut down on butter, red meat, Black Forest

Chocolate Cherry Cake; to dig in, hunker down, pray for release 

from ambition, lust, jealousy, the urge to smoke, the

urge to step out into Midtown traffic against DON’T WALK—

while In the kitchen where nothing’s dire Pamma always   

prepping leg-of-lamb, conjuring  

undulant pastureland in Ireland or Scotland, saying

“Kenny, you will never be a nine-to-five man.”

O Pamma, what hast thou wrought?

And now it’s

the Sahara starring Abbot and Costello

in legionnaire drag 

and I’m there too. Standing on a nearby sand dune

is Mr. Carpenter, our school principal and archetypal a-hole,

tapping the palm of his hand with a

perforated paddle. The man knows everything

there is to know. A “little bird” has told him. A tiny feathered Fink.