Al Fresco Cafe Poems #25

painting by Vargas


AL FRESCO CAFÉ POEMS #25


Ding au sichs
Are strange and curious things.

Fantasies constituting feelings
And formulas,

Forming foundations, change.
Zeus, like banks, substitute

Aliases à la mode. In Ancient
Times fantasies had Sirens sing,

Embellished with heroes mast-tied,
But au courant fictions are a short shirt,

A swinging leg, shoe half-off,
From a high bar stool.

She sits on tattooed yellow roses,
Thinks of mummies bones,

Rib-entangled, having sex
Wrapped around and around

With words, that print, speak
The rumored rare sensations.

Lovers as the resurrected will return
To see the particulars of biographies

Painted, symbolically with powder,
Question marks, hubcaps,

Spinning dervishes, acrostics,
Calla lilies, Freeway exits, ticket booths

On the outside of their containers,
Coffins, painted with faces,

Not the faces of those within,
Not even, the face of the next of kin.


Duane Locke

Posted over on The Hold