| Confessions of Stra
Schrag, No. 1
My first three husbands did the same thing,
Put a tape measure around the upper part of my anatomy.
These husbands more interested in numbers than the flesh,
Needed large numbers to boast to their buddies.
My husbands all hated their buddies,
Wanted to outdo them, humiliate them.
I finally met a lover, who was not interested
In mathematics, only emotions engendered by touch.
This lover was a poet, a complex, difficult, esoteric, hermetic poet.
This lover did not have any buddies.
The Hidden Man
I crawled under a large azalea bush to hide,
The bush was covered with pale lavender flowers.
The abundance of blossoms made it difficult to see inside.
On all fours, I crawled over the fallen brown leaves
That formed a padding under the flowers.
I found another hiding man. Surprised, I asked
Why was he hiding. He sneered, "I'm hiding
From what mankind calls 'pleasure.'
See that
Fox hunt, look at the faces of those empty men
Wearing long red tail coats.
Look, at those empty women
Sipping champagne from long stemmed glasses,
And cheering the men onto cruelty.
See."
I looked and saw nothing, only a long winding, empty black road.
The man then asked me, why I hid.
I could not answer. I did not know.
I had always hid.
Hiding was my lifestyle.
I wished I could hide
From this bitter and strange man.
Venice
Tonight in Venice my past life hangs on a clothesline
Suspended between a pink and a rose house.
On the clothesline I watched past events from my life flap in the wind.
The events have sounds, converse in English;
Italians walk under without ever looking up.
In one of my glances I saw white dogwoods
Blooming behind her white gold hair.
I looked again, the past no longer flapping,
But quivering in a mild breeze
Strange, these clothes hanging on the line,
For none of the clothes had ever been washed.
The Eye of the Needle
I look at my wrist,
It thinness,
Its strange thinness.
The thinness brags
It could squeeze
Through the eye of a needle.
I asked the thinness
"Why would you want to
squeeze through a needle's eye?"
Thinness replied, "Because
I like the sound of the word 'squeeze,'
Not the reality of squeezing.
My hand and I
My hand
Said it wanted to touch
A hand
That had been crossed by
The shadows
Of long dark hair
Under a shower light. I said to my hand,
"Hand, why aren't you,
just happy to touch
the leg of a wine glass."
My
hand
Said the leg
Of
a wine glass
Was glass, not flesh.
I thought of her
With the auburn glow
In her dark hair,
Thanked my hand
For never leaving me.
Duane Locke, Doctor of Philosophy in Renaissance Literature, Professor
Emeritus of the Humanities, Poet in Residence at University of Tampa for
over twenty years, publisher of over 2,000 poems in over 500 print magazines
such as American Poetry Review, Nation, Literary Quarterly, Black
Moon, and Bitter Oleander, author of 14 books of poems, his latest being
WATCHING WISTERIA (see www.vidapublishing.com),
cyber-poet, since Sept 1, 1999 has had 508 acceptances by online 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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