MEMOIRS OF DAMNISO LOPEZ, NO. 29

At the party before my departure into another trap of dark hair.

The emerald cocktail greened my chameleon tongue

That survived on myths by stretching to stick as food the insects

Who wore dark glasses and paid payments

On red, naked back, sports cars that stunned the bleeding side of the Son.

I looked at the Salome lipstick stains on edges

Of silver platters with oysters, vagueness and John the Baptist's severed head.

As I reached through my pearl penny unbuttoned Rilke shirt

To touch lichens and their loves tattooed by past needle eyes

On my locker room chest. Tomorrow, yes, tomorrow,

I'll join the windy revolutionaries, plot to burn this house.


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© Duane Locke

Duane Locke
2716 Jefferson Street
Tampa, FL 33602-1620

Duane Locke, Doctor of Philosophy in Renaissance Literature, Professor Emeritus of the Humanities, Poet in Residence at University of Tampa for over twenty years, he has had over 2,000 of his own poems published in over 500 print magazines such as American Poetry Review, Nation, Literary Quarterly, Black Moon, and Bitter Oleander, is author of 14 books of poems, his latest being WATCHING WISTERIA (to order see www.vidapublishing.com or call Small Press Distribution-1-800-869-7553), as a cyber-poet, since Sept 1, 1999 has had 659 acceptances of his poems by online e zines, photographer, listed in PSA's WHO'S WHO as one of the top twenty nature photographers, painter, currently having a one-man show of over 30 painting at the Pyramid gallery in Tampa, winner for poetry of the Edna St. Vincent Millay, Charles Agnoff, and Walt Whitman awards, now lives alone and isolated in the sunny Tampa slums. He lives estranged and as an alien, not understanding the customs, the costumes, the language, some form of postmodern English, of his surroundings. The egregious ugliness of his neighborhood has been mitigated by the esthetic efforts of the police who put up bright orange and yellow posters on each post to advertise the location is a shopping mall for drugs. His recreational activities are drinking wine, listening to old operas, and reading postmodern philosophy.
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