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Green shoes and other poems

Duane Locke

A Hot January

First publication: March 2003

http://badosa.com/p114

THE SOUND OF THE BUFFALO ON THE PRAIRIE

The hoof prints

On

The

T-shirt

Were sold

As being buffalo hoof prints,

Although they were not,

Only ink blots

Designed for a price by someone

Who had never seen a buffalo.

But the wearer of the thin cloth

When he looked in the mirror

Saw the black designs,

Could hear the sounds of buffalo hooves on the prairie,

See the dust arise from under their feet.

The sound was overpowering,

The T-shirt wearer puts his hands over his ears.

He saw himself

Riding without a saddle a spotted pony.

GREEN SHOES

She took off her green pastel shoes,

Asked,

“What shall I do with them?”

She held her shoes in her hands.

I was wondering why this concern

Over a matter so commonplace.

I replied, “Throw your green shoes

On the white rug, green and white

Often make exciting combinations.”

She looked at me, puzzled and perplexed.

I thought it might be something psychological,

Her giving all this attention to shoes.

So I suggested that if she did want

To confront the evidence that she was barefooted

To throw the shoes under the bed.

She said, “You do not understand.”

I could not understand what she referred to,

What was it that I could not understand.

She threw the shoes into the air;

The green shoes stayed suspended in the air.

Then I knew I did not understand. I did not understand.

HAYSTACKS AND FACES

The real

During the impressionist moment

Was

Thought to depend

Upon atmospheric conditions,

Thus a hay stack

In a twenty-four hour day

Could be many realities.

I suppose this is way the Greeks

In their plays

Used masks

Rather than faces

For the expression of emotions,

For the Greeks,

Except the Sophists,

Were absolutist and logo-centric,

Desiring to believe

In fixity and a self.

When faces express feelings,

Every feeling expressed

Makes someone become someone else,

And thus a sense of self is lost.

The person that one intensely loves vanishes

And is replaced to vanish again and again

According to sociological

Or atmospheric conditions.

CONVERSATIONS IN CAR WASHES

Prudence was a type of dance,

A dance

Without music,

A dance,

Solemn, sincere, severe

As are the movements of a man with a lawn mower,

Who brags to himself

That is he improving the earth

By destroying the growth of a living thing.

I suppose it was the same way with Henry VIII

When he had women beheaded,

He thought he was improving England.

Some people know the price of milk.

I don’t.

I just keep trying to subdue the punishment of aging,

And avoiding conversations in car washes.

This always happens to me,

I start off being profound,

End up being silly;

But becoming silly

Is always the result of being profound.

In the car wash my lover and I

Were discussing the virtue of prudence

And the price of milk.

I never saw her again.

THE CORNET PLAYER

No wind. Moss hanging from cypress was still,

The moss’ shadow crossed cow dung

That blazed gold in the noon sun.

The shadow was in the shape of a albatross.

By a log fence, a leaky rowboat

Was transformed into a flower bed,

Inside the rim, black dirt and black violets.

Atop the black, a lady bug opened orange wings.

An old battered bucket beside a cedar

Sent out over the surrounding bare gray ground

A shadow that looked like

A bee and butterfly hovering over a fern.

An old man playing an old cornet,

Paused on the path, asked, “What is the picnic?”

I told him that I did not know,

I was a stranger and was lost.