Poetry Magazine Duane Locke

Duane Locke

USA

THE CANYON

I recall the canyon's orange,
Hear the silence speak.
It is speaking about blonde hair
Spread out on stone.
I know I belong
In that stone garden
Cultivated by weather,
Where hips are shaped by the wind,
Breasts shaped by the rains.

Now away from the canyon,
I have an address,
But I don't know where I live.
I am somewhere inside a fence;
Everything seems far away.
My street a graveyard
That the dead have deserted.

AN EVENING IN FLORENCE
BEFORE THE DOORS OF PARADISE

The impulse planted in the hand by strangers
Instructs to turn the knob.

No, I will not open the door,
The door of the word.
My words are made of gold,
But the gold that stays in the mountain unminted,
The gold that will glitter
Only for those who enter the stone of the mountain,
Only those who walk through stone into the center of the centuries.

Words,
My untouched doors,
My incarnations.

RAIN ON FLORIDA GULF COAST

Waves expand, flatten out to flow
Pale gold over white mudflats and orange starfish.
A rain is distant. Its texture gray-greens the blue.
Illusion of transparency replaced by illusion
Of opaqueness-as if infinity had ended with a wall.
A mist walks across the water towards shore pines
The mist wears pale green shoes with small gold buckles.
A black mussel shell, turned upright to flash
Rainbows from a pearl background,
Is stuck in sand at right angle by my toe.
I finally know the wind, watch water
Wrinkle over the starfish and gold berries of seaweed.
Pre-rain darkness closes around the body like a coat.
A drizzle, speaks of dampness, then the rain falls
Like large purple grapes break on the shoulder
To trickle over the body. I'll stay in its warmth.

UNDERWATER

In a forest underwater
Is where I breath,
Open my mouth
That I kept closed on land.
I was suffocated,
Stiffed
In schoolrooms, parlors, on pavement,
And in imitation Italian ristorante
With a black hair, middle aged woman.

Underwater,
I'm alive,
Salt-soaked mosses tickle my lips,
Coral caresses my caves.

Up above water,
Only documents and dry lives.

IS IT MONDAY,
OR TUESDAY,
OR WEDNESDAY OR THURSDAY,
OR FRIDAY

There is so much hostility
On the sidewalks,
So many traps colored magenta
Because owls wear dark glasses
And angels have stuck
Gags in the mouth of leaves.

It's a weekday, although I don't know
Which day it is. It's not the day
When spiders sparkle in their webs
Attached to stars. It is the day
When the trees wear damp clothes
That cling tightly over the curves
Of their bodies, quiver,
Shake water into the air.
It is also the day the trees migrated.

I watch the petals of my desires
Fall off, drift down from twigs,
To be anonymous in a pile, to
Accumulate by curbstones until
The street cleaner brings oblivion.
I've forgotten arithmetic, forgotten
How to count. I don't know how
Many fingers I have,
But I know
One finger wants to touch something.