Poetry
by Duane Locke
THE GULF’S TONGUE
PHANTOMS
I send my words out over the gulf’s green water,
“Come near, come near, come near.”
I, alone, no one is near, so I talk to a phantom
I talk loudly, louder than the waves’ roar.
I have talked to phantoms before,
Phantoms with red, brown, or white-gold hair,
But when talking to these phantoms,
Someone was close, we touched.
I talked phantom talk to these touched phantoms,
And heard phantom talk returned.
Now I stand on this shore, by a coral rock
With a pool of green algae and pink sea anemones.
I talk to a phantom. I know no one is near.
I stand here, talking to no one
While the gulf tongue licks the thighs of sand.
THE GULL FEATHER
I spent the day with her among dark rocks.
Tides splashed in and changed the rocks’ surfaces.
The kelp no longer flat, but now brown and round.
A gull stopped on the cliff’s ledge above a rock
The gull’s shadow spread a darkness across
The bright glow of the kelp-covered wet rock.
A feather from the gull dropped down towards us.
The feather floated to touch her toes and stick.
The tip of the feather touched me.
We were bound together by a gull feather.
DEFEATED DREAMS
Dead dreams arise without coaxing
Our of the graves in the brain.,
Open their pale eyelids, stare with white eyes.
Each skeleton wears a white crown with pearls.
Each hand of bone holds
A wand with the magic tip broken off.
The other hand of bone holds
A scrap from a wine-stained shirt.
MANICURED AIR
The fingernails of the air
Was manicured
By a woman
Speaking the language of lies.
The fingernails of the air
Became identical
With the woman
Speaking the fashionable words.
The speaker did not have a profile,
The speaker did not have a shape,
The speaker was the words she spoke.
TEARS
The scars on the shepherd’s hand
Are wet from his tears.
The porcelain figure was shaped
To cry.
The tears are round
That drop from his eyes.
His tears are perfect spheres,
But different from my tears
That become flat as they fall--
First flatness, then amorphous
On the uplift of a cheek.
FAREWELL FOREVER
The last embrace:
An orange and a worried coffee maker,
A long freight train with empty box cars,
An orange and the ambush of a barroom,
A snowflake in the shape of spilled gin.
An orange and silent thunderbolts
A gold ring buttons its white collar,
An orange and a Veronese with empty rooms.
CÉZANNE
Cézanne
With scissors
Clipped countries from maps,
Painted
Each clipped country black,
Burned the black shapes,
Put the ashes in a brown clay jug with a blue stripe,
Set the jug
Among apples.
One apple with yellow hair
Turned the color of human flesh,
Became Venus.
GEESE OVER GRAVEYARDS
Trying to leave the path
With its borders of weeds
With small yellow flowers,
We find
The unpainted portrait
In a gilt frame of embossed plaster leaves.
Seeking to leave the path for the road,
We eat
The cork
Of the wine bottle we dropped
To fall and break
Into smithereens
On the sidewalk
Chalked with a game of hopscotch
Forsaking the path of dirt
For the paved road,
We arrive to watch
Geese fly over the cemetery.
TWO
I've devoted my life
Trying to find TWO,
The pure TWO,
The TWO itself,
The TWO that does not need embodiment.
I've found two doves,
Two drunks,
Two teeth,
But not TWO.
I wanted, I desired TWO,
Not two apples,
Not two snowflakes,
Not two stones.
I grow old,
But I won't renounce
The ideal of my youth,
Trying to find TWO.
CORMORANTS
Cormorants crowd pine branches,
Cormorants become crosses,
Dark crosses across the sky.
The gulf awakens, shakes her azure hair,
Watches us with its billion blue-green eyes.
The gulf with its billion green salt lips kisses us.
The dark crosses sing joyous songs,
The shore sand Duane Locke
2716 Jefferson Street
Tampa, FL 33602-16200
[BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Duane Locke, Doctor of
Philosophy in English Renaissance literature, Professor Emeritus of the
Humanities, was Poet in Residence at the University of Tampa for over
20 years. Has had over 2,000 of his own poems published in over 500
print magazines such as American Poetry Review, Nation, Literary Quarterly,
Black Moon, and Bitter Oleander. Is author of 14 print books of poems,
the latest is WATCHING WISTERIA ( to order write Vida Publishing, P.O. Box
12665, Lake, Park, FL. 33405-0665, or Amazon or Barnes and Noble).
Since September 1999, he became a cyber poet and started submitting on-line,
and since September 1999 he has added to his over 2,000 print acceptances
with 1,584 acceptances by e zines.
He is also a painter. Now has
exhibitions at Thomas Center Galleries (Gainesville, FL) and Tyson Trading
Company (Micanopy, FL) Recently a one-man show at Pyramid Galleries
(Tampa, FL)
Also, a photographer, has had 116 of his photos selected for appearance on e
zines. He photographs trash in alleys. Moves in close to find
beauty in what people have thrown away.
He now lives alone in a two-story decaying
house in the sunny Tampa slums. He lives isolated and estranged as an
alien, not understanding the customs, the costumes, the language (some form
of postmodern English) of his neighbors. The egregious ugliness
of his neighborhood has recently been mitigated by the esthetic efforts of
the police force who put bright orange and yellow posters on the posts to
advertise the location is a shopping mall for drugs. His alley is the
dumping ground for stolen cars. One advantage
Of living in this neighborhood, if your car is stolen, you can step
out in the back and pick it up. Also, the burglars are afraid to come
in on account of the muggers.
His recreational activities are drinking
wine, listening to old operas, and reading postmodern philosophy.]
sings a joyous song.
WALK INTO THE COLD