The Homeless Poet

Duane Locke, the Homeless poet - November 15, 2003

I am now after a series of hectic and tormenting days temporary settled at

Apartment 1011
Lake Morton Plaza
400-South Florida Avenue
Lakeland, FL 33801

At present I do not have a phone installed. The phone is still in the warehouse, but I will try to get a phone by Monday. It is difficult to remember a phone number I have had for fifty years. I must write it down and carry it around. Also, I have to remember a new address. This upheaval has put a great burden on me. The above will be my snail mail address.

The only time in my whole life that I can think of more distressing, disturbing, and tormenting days than these last days are when at 18 I was in the army.

My old biographical note, published so many times, is now obsolete.
The notes start with my living in an old decaying house in the Tampa slums and described the ugly surroundings and ugly activities.

The bungalow in the backyard fell down. The second floor became the first floor. My car was crushed and destroyed. My priceless scholarly library is now under the debris. A book dealer is going to try to save some of the books from the debris, but in the future I will be almost bookless. When I need information, I will have to use the internet, or go to the library which never had a collection as good as I once had. I have swore that I will never buy another book. I will have depend primarily on the memory of my erudition.

I have some books in boxes in the Winter Haven warehouse, but will turn over to a book dealer, and now I have no permanent place with the space to store the books. Now I have learned it is unwise to save and cherish anything.

I am going to miss being surrounded by books. My books were filled with my notes which scholars would considered annotations and others mars.

After the collapse of the bungalow, my house was surrounded by a posse of inspectors and police. The house was condemned as being unfit for habitation and health (although the doctors have classified me as the healthiest man even seen at my age, and I have lived in this house for fifty years). I was ordered out in six days or face fines of $500 a day and arrest. I got some insight in what it means to live in a land of freedom. Also, what happens to poets when old in America. The poets are thrown out into the streets.

The next six days were a type of hell on earth. I had to take 500 of my paintings off the walls. These painting are now stored in a Winter Haven warehouse. I do not know what I am going to do with them. Another phase of my life disappeared forever. I wonder if all my paintings will be destroyed. I cannot afford to pay storage on the paintings for a long extent of time. I am getting inurned to having most aspects of my life destroyed. I have the photographs stored in the warehouse if I can find what boxes they are in.

I was left to be destroyed in the house with most of my possessions, approximately 200 sheets, and many miscellaneous things. When my wife was alive, she loved sheets and squandered our income on buying a surplus.

All my poetic publications and poetic papers are in the Winter Haven warehouse, but I hope to save and store in the closet space I have in these two rooms. My over 5,000 published poems are now boxed in the warehouse. I hope I can keep these. But all might be destroyed.

The saddest event of the hell-on-earth days was having to take my 7 cats to the humane society. Donald Ryburn helped me and we both suffered. I still have my dog Pookie, but do not know how long I can keep her under these transient conditions. I am now cat-less, and there is a possibility I might be dogless. But departing from Pookie, is too overwhelmingly sad to even think about the possibility. At the moment, tears come into my eyes when I think about departing from Pookie, and I had to pause from writing. But during this ordeal I learned I can endure anything, but I doubt if I will ever be happy again. I will just endure until death, and possible blindness since I now have ocular degeneration. The place where I now live says if I go blind, through the army will get free rent. I hated the military so much I had almost forgot I was a veteran of WW II. I suppose a seeing-eye person will be hired to lead me around and feed me with a spoon. I don’t know if it will be required for them to play the role of Milton’s daughters and copy down my poems. I don’t even know if I could still write poems.

My exodus was aided with the help of the poets Donald Ryburn and Steve Barfield, who worked until exhaustaion. Jackie Turner and the hired hands also helped. Greer Grant was present, and she swept the floor I departed from.

This crisis and distress led to the break up of Jackie and I. I was going to live with her in Winter Haven, but the situation brought out the insight that we were completely incompatible. So after a temporary stay with her, I called Donald Ryburn to get me out of there. Donald arranged for me to be located at Lake Morton Plaza, called a retirement villa.

I was mistaken about my affection for Jackie, and even more mistaken about her affection for me. But crisis brought out truth. She never loved me. I wanted love so much that I was a temporary fool and believed she really cared. She did not. So I am now homeless, car-less, cat-less, and woman-less.

My dreams for Jackie and my future together did not correspond to her dreams about our future, so I got out in a hurry. I could say much more, but I won’t. Although one thing that shocked me about her small house where there was no room for me to work, was the hideous paintings that crowded the walls. These were some of the worst painting I have ever seen. I could not stand to live among this bad taste. The relationship is over now, as I said “Goodbye forever.” I just said the same words, “Good bye, forever” about a year and several months ago to a woman with gold twists for hair and driver of a BMW and she wanted to kill all my cats. Well, all my cats are gone now. I suppose I will never have the real intimate and close love of a woman again. The BMW girl was an exquisite beauty, and I cannot attribute these attributes to the pseudo psychic, the last woman to whom I said “Good bye, forever.” Everything seems gone. I really wanted love and failed.

I forgot to mention my opera collection, one of the largest. My old LP’s are scheduled to go to the book dealer. In the collector’s market, they are worth a fortune. The tapes I have given many to Donald, but still there is an immense collection under the debris of the fallen library. I hope to keep the CD’s, if I can find the room, for as I age, I will need music as I have little else left. Since the joie d’ vivre has vanished from my life which is now stoic endurance, I wonder what I will think of the music from Vienna.

As I have been saying, I believe I must be one of God’s most beloved men, like Job, since so many disasters have had happened to me during this year starting with a rash whose etiology is unknown, a swollen leg still not understood by medical authorities a broken rib, a cut foot whose bleeding was difficult to stop, the discovery of a visual impairment that will lead to ultimate blindness with the possibility it will take a number of years, and this latest disaster of being forced from one’s home and one’s possessions.

It took me from 7 AM to 1PM, the get this computer set up again. Then three more hours to install the new access numbers, so now I have some contact with others. I still have not installed the printers, for the connecting cords to the printers are in the warehouse.

I hope to return to poetry writing soon as I calm down and get adjusted to an entirely new lifestyle. I wonder since now I have almost nothing what I will write like in the future. I do have improved physical and material surroundings. I’m finally out of the neighborhood where so many have encouraged me to move from for years.

Now, there will be no fence to mend, after the vandals have damaged. No more city inspectors ordering me to cut grass. No more concerns over trees or fallen trees. No more concerns over scattered glass on the floor after someone has thrown a beer bottle through the window. I won’t even have to worry about a leaking roof, which I had just fixed. Now, there will not be any more roaches. I will not have to repair the decaying porch, where I fell and broke a rib. I won’t have to hear boom boxes playing rap songs. I won’t have to mow the lawn.

My whole lifestyle is changing---
Now at Lake Morton Plaza, where Donald Ryburn arranged for me to stay.

I am served three meals a day. This is a distinct change in my lifestyle because I never ate breakfast, very little lunch, and if any, very little dinner. I have to get up at six to make it to breakfast on time. Afterwards, I take Pookie for a walk, try to get her to walk around a lake where there are White Pelicans, Great Blue Herons, Wood Ibis, coots, ducks, three type of swans. But Pookie does not want to walk. She just wants to sit down. It is a joy, just as it was in Bruges, watching coots swim in and out of willow shadows with the shadows crossing their white bills.

I am now drinking orange juice, eating fruits and vegetables that was rare when I was alone in that decaying house in the Tampa slums. I should get even more healthy.

The only problem I find eating here is the social life. Everyone is so friendly, and I have to engage in conversations during dining. Everyone is old. Not a young person in sight. It is strange to me for someone who has spent his life among the young to suddenly be spending it among the old. There are no intellectuals here, so I doubt if I will engage in discussions of how John Keats’ “Negative Capability” anticipates postmodern Aporia. This is the first place where I have even been where I am the prettiest man. I am always being praised for my upright and energetic walk.

There are two one-hundred year old men here, one always wears a blue suit. This one is in very good shape. He drives a Lexus but for old memories, I was hoping he drove a BMW.

I suppose I will be accustomed to making ordinary and standard remarks during meal conversations. One woman, about 90, said if I were ever lonely to come up to her room. This is what I mean when I say I suppose I will never have intimate and close love of a woman again. I love young woman, and a recent woman poet pointed out to me that I have never had in my recent existence a lover that was not 30 years younger or more than I was.

I also have weekly housekeeping service. This is a new change in my life, I only cleaned up my old six room house on an annual basis.

Once a week my laundry is taken care of. It comes back stacked neatly and on coat hangers. This never happened during my precious existence. The clothes unfolded were thrown into a basket.

I have a brand new Maytag Washing Machine in the warehouse which I plan to give to Mary, Donald’s friend, if she wants it. Pookie and I stayed some time at her lovely house. I wish I had not bought it, for in two weeks the collapse came into being.

There is a full activities program, but I can overlook for I do not play cards, bingo, or care for popular entertainment. Poetry will keep me occupied. I will have to give up painting, and there is no trash anywhere near for my photography. Perhaps, I will start photographing birds again, if I can get Pookie content to stay alone.

There is transportation to shopping centers three times a week. I will have to go on one to get Pookie a chicken, and myself, wine. I always drunk wine when I had joyous thoughts, but my wine drinking at the current moment has been curtailed.

I no longer need a car, there is a barber shop on the premises, and a doctor comes two times a week.

This gives some account of my new life due to the city inspectors throwing me out of my house where I dwelled 50 years and in six days made me homeless.

Duane

Posted over on The Hold

Gee, I wonder how things have gone over the last 6 years for old Duane and his Pookie. Odd that his obsolete Bio is still floating around in hundreds of places on the Net.

Glenn