Two by Duane Locke

WE NEED TO BE IGNORANT OF WHAT
WE ARE LOOKING FOR, IF WE
ARE GOING TO FIND TRUTH

Gowns, colored like Fra Angelico colors brushed
On San Marco cell walls, near
The waist-high desk with the brown varnish
Worn to pinkness of raw wood
By brown cassock-covered elbows
Of Savnarola, gowns

Covering black body-tight body stocking
With skeleton bones, blazing white,
Painted on the black,
Gowns wore by grumbling girls,
Anticipating the monotony of rehearsal.

One girl, absconded, thumbed a ride to a roadhouse.

All the girls disdained to act in allegories
Proclaiming lofty things. It was a city
Where all dogs were chained to steel leaning sticks.
There was the required anteroom piano practice
During the backroom adult-only, x-rated, cocktail hours.

When the obligation fulfilled, the girls
Would undon their gowns, put on overalls,
And paint their eyelids indigo, paint
Their lips the white of white geraniums.

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PAVANES AMONG POVERTY

A pavane, commotion in corporeal corridors,
Otherwise a community, carved monumental
Contours, liquid in audible accents of silence.

Together, we are alive in our solitarinesses,
Our solitudes, our occurrents, existences
Have become singularities and alterities.

We have leaped over the fence of the infinite,
Transformed to be taciturn orators of the finite.
We, now aliens among alienations, freed.

We were untouched by their stake fires,
Although burned as was Bruno,
We sparkle like ashes once stars.