WORD TRANCE NO. 90
The old women in olden
times talked
As their thumbs turned
green
From the shelling of beans
That fell into wash pans,
blue
With scattered white
smears.
I was five. They were in their forties.
They dressed to look
deceased,
Resembled the dress of
Whistler’s mother
Painted during the age of
European Dandyism.
Each one turned herself
into a panticon,
And preceded a
surveillance camera,
As they watched the
children at play,
To see that noting in
their games
Would please the Devil who
was more real
Than their husbands out
plowing
Furrows through red clay.
I watched the sycamore
seeds,
Bronze globes that rolled
And broke to fly in air as
gold.
When they discussed life
it was in
Ex cathedra whispers. The foundation
Of their wisdom was from sermons
Of an ignorant preacher.
Looking back, the scene
now seems
A genre painting, such as
an early Van Gogh
When he painted Potato
Eaters.
In college, I read a
sociologist’s account
That he generalized as a
petrified life,
But the savant, as most savant,
did not
Know what he was talking
about.
Their bean shelling and
their voices
Created an atmosphere of
jouissance
Of which our poplar urban
culture
Are ignorant and have no
understanding.
As I recall the narrative
of this time
That my memory wrote, its
complexity,
Its multifariousness, its uncanny depth,
Its alterity, I recognize
their voices
Hid in me. I did not know the voices
Was part of my
corporeality, but the
The voices after so many
years spoke imperatives.
WORD TRANCE NO 92
Son, you’re six.
Son, my sun, my life was
ripe black berries found in briars,
Briars tangled, thorned,
numinous
Like the twisted
sharp-edged wires atop the jail’s fence.
My brother was harassed
like a horse and forced
To pull a peacock-embroidered
bedspread factory
Like Sisyphus up and down
a red clay hill.
His mind’s apartness,
being autodidactic, was tabooed.
So, son, you’re six, so, I
send you to school.
So, at school, you’ll
learn to be ignorant like the others.
Once ignorant, you’ll be
able to survive among the ignorant
With only minor bruises.
WORD TRANCE NO. 93
Philosophy
Begins with thunder,
Plato said.
Philosophy
Ends with an umbrella,
Aristotle said.
BIO NOTES:
Duane Locke, PH. D, lives
hermetically in Tampa, Florida near anhinga, gallinules, raccoons, alligators. Has had published 6,967 different poems, none
self-published or paid to be published.
This includes 33 books of poems.
His latest book
publications are DUANE LOCKE, THE FIRST DECADE, 1968-1978 (First 11 books—Order
from publisher Bitter Oleander Press or AMAZON---YANG CHU’S POEMS,
Order from AMAZON---TERRESTRIAL ILLUMINATIONS, FIRST SELECTION, from FOWLPOX
PRESS.
Forthcoming 2015: VISIONS from KIND OF HURRICANE PRESS. Nov. 2015: TERRESTRIAL ILLUMINATIONS, SECOND
SELECTION (Sorties) from Hidden Clearing Books
100’S of his poems can be found by clicking Duane
Locke on GOOGLE.
He is a photographer of Surphotos
and Nature. Has had 545 photos
published,
Some as book covers. A book of 40 of his surphotos has been published by BLAZE VOX,
POETIC IMPRINTS, RESPONSES
TO THE ART OF DUANE LOCKE, by Connie Stadler and Felino Soraino.
His paintings have been
described in Gary Monroe’s EXTRAORDINARY INTERPRETITONS,
Published by University of
Florida Press, and are in many private collections and museums.
He is a student of
philosophy—favorites: Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze...
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