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.

#

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.

Hubert Hubert by Duane Locke

Hubert was an applicant with an accent,
Ashanti or actor's school, for the petty job
Of city planner. He boasted he built
An Opera House in Plant City. I told him,
Face to face, there was no opera house in Plant City.
Unruffled, he replied, Well I must have been built
The opera house in Virginia City. Hubert was sartorially attired
In clothes of capitulation, the type worn
By slave mentalities and the unself-owned,
Faded blue jeans and a T-shirt, much washed,
That advertised light beer. Hubert suddenly began
To cry, "I want my sister. I need my sister."
I told him, face to face, that no had no sister.
He had no brother. He was an only child.
And his mother and father were dead.
Hubert shouted, I'm going to find my sister.
Hubert looked at me as if my chronicle
Of his life were a fiction.

Hubert spent the worst years of his life,
Searching for his sister.
Hubert never found his sister,
So Hubert in old age bought an Ipod.

Duane Locke & YBR

The following Duane Locke poems all appeared in my old print mag Yellow Bat Review.

SANIBEL NOTES #2

Small drops of rain fall
On the white mud
That circles alligator's eye.
The drops fall, spread,
Form gray fuzzy flowers
Around the eye.
On this gray day,
The alligator's eye
Shines out of
A garden of gray flowers

- YBR #2

#

JANUARY POEMS, NO. 94

All things are gone,
All things if seen without illusions are ashes,
Their reality
Has been burned by the human mind.

The roach is not a roach, but an ash.
The bird is not a bird, but an ash.
The butterfly is not a butterfly, but an ash.

There are fires in the human brain,
Fires
Lit
By the words people speak,
Words that burn all reality.

All that people know is ashes.
All that people kiss is ashes.

- YBR #3

#

JANUARY POEMS, NO. 96

Summer waters thawed her mind of winter.
She drowned.
My sweater pulled off, spread over the grass of the bank.
It is warm,
But I have a mind of winter.

The spot where she jumped is smooth now.
I think
I see
Under the surface the gold twists that were her hair,
The eyes
Whose color could not be classified.
What color were these eyes?
I gazed towards her eyes again,
But now her eye lids are shut tight.
I only see minnows swim in front of her eyelids.

I have a mind of winter.

- YBR #3

#

JANUARY POEMS, NO. 97

I hold my hand out the car window to signal a turn.
A man gets up from the corner bench and steals my wristwatch.

I park the car, chase him.
He runs towards me, passes me, steals my car.

I go to a booth to phone the police.
As I dial, the man returns, pickpockets my wallet.

I see the man standing a few feet from me,
Counting how much money I had.

I recognize the man. It is my father.
I strip myself naked, hand him all my clothes.

I rename myself Francis, but my father
Refuses to call me "Francis," calls me "George, Jr."

I do not know what to think when hearing him call me,
"George, Jr." His name is Henry.

- YBR #4