the ho!d - Duane Locke/may 2000

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 (to order see www.vidapublishing.com or call Small Press Distribution-1-800-869-7553), cyber-poet, since Sept 1, 1999 has had 530 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.
Duane 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.

Duane Locke

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Duane Locke
2716 Jefferson Street
Tampa, FL 33602-1620

DANGEROUS
People who know about my life
Whisper about me.
They whisper there is something evil about him.
I hear their low voices saying,
"He loves a lemon tree."
These people go on to elaborate
There is a lemon tree in his backyard.
He owns a lemon tree,
But does not pull the fruit.
I observe people staring scornfully at me,
And talking about
How I rub the hips of lemons,
But never jerk the lemons off the tree,
Never take a knife,
And cut the lemon in half.
The people say disdainfully,
He caresses the lemons,
But does not squeeze out the juice.
The people go on condemning me,
Saying he never crushes the lemon,
And then throws the crushed lemon into the trash.
He just gazes at the lemons.
He is very strange,
For he still loves the lemons
When the brown spots of old age
Appear on their sagging sides.
The people say, "He is evil,
Dangerous to our traditional values."

THE DEAD FROG
When a child, I saw a frog,
Floating belly-up in the stagnant rainwater
Of an abandoned swimming pool.
I was upset, very sad.
I waded out to the frog,
Picked it up,
Tried to breathe life back into the limp body.
People saw me, jeered.
At school, my teacher whispered to the principal,
"He is nasty. He kisses dead frogs."
The principal put it on my permanent record.

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