Special Feature

Photographs, Text, and Poems By Duane Locke

It amazes me that my alley is an art gallery. I walk until I discover some discard that will become beauty. Moving in close, looking for beauty in what is usually never seen, I find a design that speaks and I take my photographs.

Snack food wrappers illegally dumped in the alley. A photograph by Duane Locke.

BEDROOM
 
On my bedroom wall
Something wild sleeps
On a fallen, decaying tree.
This wild thing sleeps
Even when the noise
From a block party
Makes the dead beg for silence.
The wild thing
Once when awake
Found no where
In any dance or song
Is there a dance or song.
The wild thing sleeps
All day and all night.
The wild thing doesn't dream,
For there is no use
Dreaming about what will never be.
The wild thing sleeps
And does not dream as do the dead.

LAST WORDS
 
What were our last words?
Did we talk about something
Other than ourselves,
About how Uccello's dragon
Looked like a child's toy,
Or how girls on swings in Fragonard
Always wore dresses spotted with pink roses.
 
I remember now, we talked about
The Madonna at St. Elia, Italy.
How the plaster had fallen,
Leaving her lips blank.
 
Yes, we talked about how time
Brings blank lips.

Board with metal and other debris on top of its painted surface. A photograph by Duane Locke

A piece of wire across wilted grass and a purple cloth. A photograph by Duane Locke

GUILLOTINE
 
Beheaded bodies boast
They talk wiser than those
Who have brains.
Beheaded bodies kiss
More often than those
Who have lips.
 
I suppose this is why
The line to the guillotine
Is so long.

THE WIND
 
The wind promised
If I would take off my clothes,
It would turn into a girl.
 
I started taking 
Off my clothes
Inherited from my ancestors.
 
Under the first layer,
Another layer;
Then an another layer.
 
The wind grew impatient
After waiting for years,
Left.

Yellow paint dried on the ground and crossed by sticks and a blue piece of paper. A photograph by Duane Locke.

THE DOLL
 
A child was given a doll,
He carried the doll
Under his arm for twenty years.
The doll had grown
To be a part of his body.
Twenty years old,
The doll wanted to marry,
Said she was in love
With a doll dressed shabby,
A rock singer.
He said, "No,
The operation to separate them
Would be too painful and dangerous."
The doll, sad, refused to eat.
Both died from starvation.

Duane Locke lives in Tampa, Florida. His devotion and enthusiasum for his art is phenomenal. He is Professor Emeritus of the Humanities at the University of Tampa and he was Poet in Residence there for over twenty years. He is a doctor of Philosophy in Renaissance Literature. You can easily find dozens of Duane's online poems by typing "Duane Locke" into any Web search engine form and pushing the search button. He has published over 2,000 poems. Offline his work has been published in American Poetry Review, Nation, Literary Quarterly, Black Moon, Bitter Oleander, and over 500 other print magazines. WATCHING WISTERIA, his latest of 14 books of poems, can be purchased through www.vidapublishing.com or by phoning Small Press Distribution at 1-800-869-7553.