Sigmar Polke – Winterreise (Winter Journey)

Ivan Klein
October 2019

Palme auf Autostoff (Palm Tree on Fabric), 1969

Sigmar Polke – Winterreise (Winter Journey)
David Zwirner Gallery June 2016 (Some Impressions)

Out of the scrambled egg of consciousness, out of the opium peace pipe

in the feathered cap of a seated genie / comes the green leaf jungle

of forget-ful-ness,

comes the brown and silver vision

of a forgotten thought:

come the red mosaic Himalayas

of a splashed idea / comes again that nightmare

that will not yield its rightful name –

which makes a mess of its nest … that obliterates

line / color / form … but stays alive at the very edge of its god-awful self

_______________________

Smack!

Life dazzles:

At the top of the mast, semaphores flutter while

thought itself embeds the lightning of the sun.

A faceless pilgrim on an obscure reindeer pauses

before a universal scream

__________________

form or its lack thereof;

either way comes rain

&

the inner life of a tree that

grows the blues.

Hidden in the drip

A tank / a wiseman / an elephant

being barbequed

& is that the Wandering Jew I see

underwater

contemplating the Eiffel Tower?

The nightmare thickens into the sleep of a skeletal dream …

__________________

The cunt of the world – the explosion of its red fire – it wanders into the

volcanic wilderness and onto the bright untitled seashore.

The man in the moon is bug-eyed as a crowd

       telescopes the Beast traveling to its very own meridian.

He weeps for all of it / all of them as some schmuck with earlaps

& a backpack refuses to hear himself think.

The globe, the man in the moon, the archetypal schmuck,

finger painted on blue waves;

finger painted under a black & blue sky

at the very same moment that some poor jerk got his nose

squashed against a reasonable  facsimile of West Africa.

__________________

That moon man of ours knows & is horrified

by what he doesn’t see

While the fool sits way up top

A man-made tower, the world his oyster.

The schmuck transformed into the universal artist

paints the almost gone world in stitches.

— In memory S.D.

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Ivan Klein published Toward Melville, a book of poems from New Feral Press, in July 2018. Previously published chapbooks are Some Paintings by Koho & A Flower Of My Own from Sisyphus Press. His work has been published in the Forward, Urban Graffiti, Otoliths, and numerous other publications.