E MAIL TO DAMNISO LOPEZ 186
In front of
Or behind me, or even left side of me,
Or right side,
All
being measured or designated according to
to what direction I face
When standing in my glass surrounded front porch,
Really it is directionless this street as a perception
Of my mind, a function of my body.
If no body, no street exists to me due to my unawareness.
When I die, the street that exists
As it was interpreted by my perception no longer exists,
The street becomes something else
In the mind of another.
The word “street” is meaningless.
There are no facts, everything is defined differently
By the idiosyncrasies of a concrete
Particular unique individual, unless
He as a lickspittle accepts the consensus
Of the status quo that is always a friendly fiction.
What we accept as seen is a fiction.
A position in an Askawain architecture
Might provide a more exciting
Break away from the banality
Of the quotidian home and
Its quotidian streets.
This morning after a breakfast
Of calamari and chardonnay, The street to me
Is a yellow ribbon.
I did not want to perceive the street
As a yellow ribbon.
If the street is experienced as a ribbon.
I wanted the street to be an azure,
Turquoise, or ultramarine ribbon,
But it is rare when one has what he
Or she wants. Perhaps
The self, or one of the selves that are our self,
Is not a free agent (although the word “free”
Has been so distorted and misused that the
Word “free” has little meaning when it is
Appears in public discourse, and the word
Is only endowed with meaning when used
Privately, hermetically, in a solipsistic manner.
Everyone invents his own private dictionary
That is unique and not known to anyone else.)
Perhaps my street is a yellow ribbon is
Due to my being
A construct of a social network
Of which I am unaware,
But exists as its victim.
But I think this street being a yellow ribbon
Is due to what is totally other,
Something I’ll never understand,
And no one else will understand,
But there will be surmises, gossip,
And ex cathedra explications
As the world survives caught
In the trap of its lies and fantasies.
At the moment
On this street
I see as a yellow ribbon
Rides an old man,
Helmeted,
On a yellow bicycle.
He smiles at the minutes.
He once saw
All clothed women
As naked.
Now he sees
All women as skeletons
On silver silk in a coffin
An old man, helmeted,
Rides by on a bicycle
Smiles somewhat
At the minutes.
Being is becoming, be-
Coming is being, both
Are neither, as I neglect
The rain-colored ribbon
On which everything depends,
The rain has brought
A darkness to the yellow.
The heaviness of bicycle tires
Squeezes water from
The yellow of the ribbon.
I gaze at this street
That is a yellow ribbon,
How did the street
Become a yellow ribbon.
Why type of ribbon is it.
Is it the type of ribbon
That wind-up-to-dance-
Mechanically-wave- arms-
To-welcome-to-mathematics-not
Human-flesh-toy dolls
Wear as a tied bow around
Their white-gold haired wigs.
The ribbon gives the appearance
That the sinister doll is innocent
In age or corruption and wars.
If a button is pushed
The doll will goose step
And wave flags, repeat
Lines, now expunged,
From the original
Star-spangled banner that
Are printed on her wet T shirt:
“Fill the waters with the blood
Of the infidels. Make the turbaned
One bow down.”
The yellow ribbon that is a road
Has a sprayed surface
That states the self-evident and conventionally rational
Instead of antidotes, defamiliarization, parataxis.
Its statements cannot be exorcised from consciousness,
Although
There is relief
In sensing that beneath
The self-evident and conventionally rational
There is an erotic, exotic paradise
Of non sequitors and nonsense
That can become aesthetic.
Simple songs, Country-Westerns
That destroy deep and genuine emotions
Through truncation and generalization
Without references or intensity,
Become commodities,
Being simple-minded labels
On faked products, are written
About yellow ribbons,
Revered, memorized, repeated.
The yellow ribbon
That is the street threatens,
Threatens me.
Its inquisitors
Accuse me of hiding in many places,
Hiding in the isolation
Of the expanded consciousness,
In elitist aestheticism,
In exalted literary subjectivity,
In inaccessible philosophical erudition,
In psychological exploration,
In classical skepticism and dissent,
In the serious utterance,
In a privileging of mind over objects,
In no things but in ideas,
In an alienated subjectivity,
In individualistic, personal expression,
In a Keatsian sensations rather than thoughts,
In a disgust with quotidian life and quotidian discourse,
In a celebration of the signifier slipping from the signified,
In a private language of self-expression,
In not having an anxiety of influence,
In not having a theme or a single meaning,
In a linguistic reality, words not being objects,
In the phenomenology, not the physicality of perception,
In believing linguistic net works that construct us
Can be deconstructed,
In the anti-Saussean attitude that acts can be meaningful
In a phenomenal, hermetic, esoteric,
Private sense outside of context and conventions.
In a terrestrial, this-worldly illumination
Rather than the other-worldly celestial illumination,
In a disdain of the language of lies
That people in their daily discourse speak.
The yellow ribbon that is the street
Threatens me,
Accuses me of hiding
From my multiple selves,
Or my assumption of a unified self,
Or my contentment
With accepting what is myself
As the totally unknowable other,
The street that is a yellow ribbon
Says
That I buy my clothes
From Good Will
So I can hide from myself
By wearing
Someone else’s pants,
Someone else’ s shirts,
Someone else’s socks,
Someone else’s shoes.
I never bought anything
From Good Will.
In my urge towards transgression
I seek an alternate to conventional
And standard nonconformist expression,
Not Beat dissidence and its bourgeois
Hedonism that the bourgeois
Tried to keep hidden while indulging.
Nor the surrender to
The clown’s antics to discredit late capitalism.
I would like to go and live with
Purple gallinules,
But it too wet for my health
In their reeds.
Distant from the street that is a yellow ribbon,
Her interpretation of her prior life covered
With a thick black opaque inner verbal cloth,
My finger touching a freckle on a forehead
As a finger sought an epiphany and birth of what
Was present but never born, what was dormant
And wide awake, a Romantic desire
Beyond Romanticism, a desire for Realism,
Something now unknown and not understood.
Bio:
Duane Locke, Doctor of Philosophy, English Renaissance literature,
Professor Emeritus of the Humanities, was Poet in Residence at the University of Tampa for over 20 years.
Has had over 5,000 poems published. As of November, 2006 5,726 poems published.
Over 2,000 were published in print magazines, such as American Poetry Review, Nation, and Bitter Oleander. In September 1999, he became a cyber poet, added over 3,000 poems published in E zines.
Is the author of 14 print books of poetry, and in 2002, added 3 E books,
The Squids Dark Ink, From a Tiny Room, and The Death of Daphne.
The entire Spring 2004 issue of the magazine Bitter Oleander is
devoted to a 92 page interview with Duane Locke and will include sixty of his poems.
His work is included among the neglected poets, such as H.D., Amy Lowell, Weldon Kees, in Dan Schneider’s renown Cosmoetica.
He is also a painter, having many exhibitions, such as at the city art museum in Gainesville, Florida. A recent book, Extraordinary Interpretations by Gary Monroe, published by University of Florida Press,
Has a discussion of Duane Locke’s paintings. His work is currently on exhibition at the Polk Museum of Art, and will be added to the permanent collection.
Also, a photographer, now has over 278 photos in e zines. He does close-ups of trash tossed away in alleys and on sidewalks. Now, he has completed a series called “mystic vegetation.” and “The Goddess Inanna.” He is currently doing what he calls Surphotography, and photographing nature, birds, insects,
Etc.
He is listed in Who’s Who in America, 2006 (Marquis.)
For more information on Duane Locke, click on Duane Locke on Google, There are about a half-million entries under his name.
On MSN, only 60,000 entries.
Wow!
