About the Poet:
A Doctor of Philosophy, Duane has taught renaissance literature as a professor emeritus of the humanities, and has been a former poet in residence at the University of Tampa for over 20 years. He has 1000s of poems published in places such as American poetry review, nation, bitter oleander; and online in many ezines. published 14 books and 3 e-books, the squids dark ink, from a tiny room, and the death of daphne.
CORPOREAL VISIONS NO. 1
An old, regal-red bantam rooster sat on my termite-chewed
Window sill when I was tossed into the world.
He crowed loudly, and was an oracle.
I felt his crow ooze though my new-born skull.
Moved in, to live in my new-born brain.
Many times I inwardly again heard the crow,
Much louder, very loud, when people
Tried to speak their beliefs and values into me.
His loud crow returning, erased their voices,
Erased their presence. I was saved from
Living by the lies by which our world lives by.
I did not learn to laugh at their trivial, unfunny jokes
That they laughed at. I did not want
The life-styles they worked so hard to maintain.
I learned from a news broadcast the city politicians
Had passed a law that barred roosters
From living with the city limits.
CORPOREAL VISIONS NO. 2
When Blake saw a tree, he saw leaves
as the green songs of green angels.
He saw, felt an authentic reality, an earth reality,
When the human slave mentality
Sees a tree, he imposes a man-made falsity,
He sees saleable lumber, his mortgaged house,
A fence or a gambling casino copied
From a Gothic Cathedral.
I saw in fork of a tree, a golden snake.
I wanted to trade my BMW
For his golden foot tracks.
I gazed at gold and green,
The snake surrounded by lichen.
I saw spirals that refused to become circles
Lassoes, or crowns. When
The green sea of the grass opens
For the golden snake to crawl,
His body touches the earth.
Harmonizes with the earth,
His scales hear the authentic wisdom
Spoken underground by pearly savant worms.
CORPOREAL VISIONS NO. 3
Under a clock, a replica of a knight
Lance-knocking off another knight
In the Grand Square of Munich,
A platform built to protest a war.
There is much joy in the protest
About this war that no seems
To understand what is about
Or that their life-style and beliefs
Were the real cause of the war.
Much guitar playing, people shaking,
Much marijuana smoke.
I far away hear the joyous noise.
I gaze at rainbow streaked water
Rippled by wind in a marble fountain
Designed for short German dogs
To drink from. I listen to the sounds
Of dogs lapping water. The sounds
are strange sounds, sounds
Never heard before—mystic sounds.
The sounds fill my inwardness
With a color, a color that resembles
A bizarre Matisse sea color—
A color not of an actual sea,
But a color that expresses
The sea better than the actual sea.
I am standing by a sea, a sea
That is not a sea, but a hyper-sea.
The dogs lapping water go away.
I am cast back into the unreality
Of the man-created world.
CORPOREAL VISIONS NO. 4
Sipping by Trajan column in Rome, Campari
The west wind compose rain drops atop
Plate glass—composition shaped
Like crystal orchid. I gaze at the art work
Through my Campari. The whiteness changes to
The color of lips that float in a Magritte paining.
I gaze at reflection at glass-covered pink marble.
Now two pinks, pink above pink.
The scene erased the sounds of horns and motors
Of the small cars and shouting drivers.
I was living in a double pinkness.
Something never experienced before.
Everything was pianissimo.
I was feeling an intense rapture,
And the reality of this rapture
Made me wonder what number Pythagoras
Would use to diminish my intense reality.
CORPOREAL VISIONS NO. 5
Circa 4 Am I was dreaming of a girl
Who called her umbrella a “parasol.”
Then my dream shifted from a moon
That was shaped like a dog and barked
Another shift: the scene resembled
A B movie made during the “30’s”
About Colonial Africa. Spears,
Whose shafts were bird-feather
Decorated pointed at my eyes.
I saw no one was holding the spears,
Then the faces Levinas talks about
Came into view. Levinas alterity faces
Were spotted with white commas.
White dashes. The faces spit,
Growled, threated ostracism.
Then a Chief appeared, I think
He was African, but might have been
Native American. He raised his tomahawk
Blade toward my nose.
I wanted to cancel this unsound night sleep.
So I told the Chief, a joke
I had heard on a late night show.
The Chief laughed and laughed,
Repeated the joke several times,
High-fived me, and said “Cool,”
Handed me my pardon from my life sentence.
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