I live in the reign
of sparrows
Bird tracks
make circles
in my palms
What isn’t is
We have left
bones in the forest
& dark swans
under the water
Howie Good, 2014
Remixed works:
Michael’s Roof, by Heather S. Steliga
Mount Chicora, by Heather S. Steliga
Changing Hands, by Heather S. Steliga
Jade Crutches Hold Up My Eyelids, by Heather S. Steliga
Peasants, by Heather S. Steliga
1
God naked. And, seeing all that for the first time,
I move on to the next point, which, of course,
has a slightly different color, shades of brown –
the autumn of 1970, or Vienna during the Nazi period.
Around it I feel the skin burning. I mean, something happens,
something I don’t actually see, the light not good,
although I didn’t necessarily intend it that way.
2
Someone comes along
with a machine and thinks he’s a god,
and I don’t need that.
But he’s certainly an emperor, a king.
After the war, we see the view
from his left eye as he lies on a chaise longue,
the view out over his moustache.
How terrible. No colors. Green light without colors.
Because a feeling has no form.
It has a blurred quality, a kind of flailing about.
I’ll paint it red.
And so surrealism came to our small town.
Hundreds of people lined up outside to enter,
although there was no wait.
3
You push a button
with the palm of your hand
and still fail to disappear.
I have other problems –
X-rays, a pig’s red nose,
loads of ghosts and aura.
But what appeals to me
is precisely this difficulty.
That’s to say, I’m totally normal,
although even today,
the grinning man in the moon
whose skull was open at the back
was beginning to catch up.
Howie Good, 2014
Remixed work:
Maria Lassnig in conversation with Frieze co-editor Joerg Heiser,
Frieze: Issue 103
A man holding a razor.
A man on a chair smoking.
A man shitting.
All quite indifferent
to one another’s
presence or plight.
As you walk through
room after room
it becomes clear
that only grimaces remain,
that the worst
has happened,
that you can live
with the worst.
A man sits naked
with torn newspaper
around his feet.
A man reclines in a vest
on a stained red couch.
The bandages and the screams
are already in place.
I’ve always hoped
in a sense to be able
to paint the mouth
like Monet painted a sunset.
Man is an unhappy ape.
But if he knows it, he isn’t.
Howie Good, 2014
Remixed work:
Francis Bacon and Walt Disney by John Berger