THREE POEMS
BY DUANE LOCKE

















REDUCING ALL THAT IS MADE
TO A GREEN THOUGHT
IN A GREEN SHADE

I sensed, when alive as a child,
A bamboo-cluster hider,
A caresser of the moon
In the underground of the daylight wind,
An embracer of seas
In the flowers of elbows,
A fondler of fingertips of rain in the gull’s sound,

I sensed
When alive as a child,
How other children,
Their parents were united
And dedicated to destroy
The dignity,
The self-esteem,

Thyme and time,
The conchs and candied yams,
The onions, the opinions
Of others.

Volley balls were their weapons,
Lethal, their textbook versification,
Their monosyllabic language,
Truncated, derogated.

Blind to the autumn’s leaves apricot light
And the tulip silk lips,
They cowered in the conclaves
Of Central Committees,
Sat in stiff-legged chairs
And passed laws.

+ + + + +

IS MAN A BLUNDER OF GOD,
OR GOD A BLUNDER OF MAN,
FREDERICH NIETZSCHE.

The air, the atmosphere,
Was a cross-current
Of the concussions of blues,
As if the sky had been hit
With hammers and its skin
Exuded ultramarine fluids
As does the speckled blonde
Bodies of sea hares when
Sensing the possisibility of peril.
It was a sky of disconcertion,
Thus a sky of stimulation.

Intoxication, elation suffused,
Tranquility was flurries,
Furies, the marshes’ whizzing,
Olive green sea spray grew
From the stems of light
That dented the shore air.

Fortunate, no airplane flew
Above to slice with sounds
Wounds in the clouds.
The sound of horns and motors
That bring Sweeney to Mrs Portor
In the spring were not heard,
Because it was the Easter Holidays,
Sweeny and Mrs. Portor
With the memorized gestures
From a script, inattentively
Jerked, Las Vegas swaggers
While sacrificing syntax
To stories with a plot of exodus.

To cross the waters, a bridge.
He wished there was no bridge,
There were no bridges anywhere,
The man-construction that separates
The natural connectness. He wished
No bridge ahead, not ahead
These antique planks that are turned
With a crank to open so cargoes
Could go without impediments
To shores, docks, piers, warehouses.

He, on this day
When his fingers magnified the breeze,
Through the mind
Strolled girl with jet-black short hair
In pale yellow silk kimonos,
Leaping gazelle hands
That send out shadows
Of black conflagrations,

He wished no bridge ahead,
So his walk
Could be on lily pads
As if he were moor hen,
He wished to be by a miracle,
A water bird
That could walk across water
As while white butterflies
Waved their white wings
From the tightly squeezed petals
Of water lilies.

The noon sun, so far-away
Was near, as if the sun
Stood a few feet away,
To streak the pebbles
Of this Dover beach
With varied colors,
The pebbles tossed
From the deep to touch
One another among
The seaweed’s dark green
Were transformed into fireworks,
Exploded to celebrate conflation,
As the texts of pebbles
Became a new revelation.

But on horseback, the spurs
His scepter, a man rode
With blue notes leftover
From the anvils of Ybor City,
And the puffballs of his unease,
He once a fireman, once a policemen,
Still a deacon, a Noah
Who built ark with scraps
From a junk cars lot
And read the internet
Weather report to learn
When the terrorism
Of the flood would flow,
Saw the solitary paused
Before an entrance
On the bridge’s first plank.

He, the ex-fireman, the ex-policeman
Immediately
Hated this unknown man
Whom he had never before seen.
He hated his man
Because he sensed
That the man loved life,

So the horseman whispered
To himself,
This man is trespassing
On my private property,
He spits
Into the face of my power,
Took out his rifle
From the leather holster,
Sparkling with sequins,
And shot
The solitary dead.

+ + + + +

IN A CEMETERY BY THE SEA

I asked to be buried as I lived, as a
Conformist,
A cipher who
Jumped on the bandwagon,
Joined the parade,
Followed the crowd,
Kept in step,

So I asked to be buried,
Sartorially modish--according to

The prevalent, voguish trend, the
Quotidian mannerism,

The au courant,
Hyper-elegance
Of the slum euphuist,
The haute courtre of the dumpster
And garbage dump,

The commonplace style of the shabby sublime,

Thus my last request
Was to be buried in

Faded, torn blue jeans,
A body shirt, with a Tennessee Williams histrionic
Tear,

But my body shirt covered with a
Brown
Corduroy coat, elbows patched, the same
Coat
That all, both men and women, wear
To play canasta
At Cannes film festivals.

My funeral was my grand performance, the rest
Of my life
Was a bad act and now forgot.



Author bio:

Duane Locke, PH. D. (English Renaissance Poetry), has had (as of May 2007) 5,859 poems published in print magazines and e- zines. He has published 17 print and e-books of poetry. Duane is also a painter, and has exhibited widely. A discussion of his work appears in Gary Monroe’s Extraordinary Interpretations (University of Florida Press). In addition, Duane is a photographer, publishing some 289 photos. In his photography, Duane prefers to do close-ups of trash tossed in alleys, as well as of vacant lots, mystic vegetation, visual music, and nature. For more information, Duane advises readers to click on Google, as he has quasi-half million entries. Duane Locke is also listed in Who’s Who In America (Marquis).