E Mail To Damniso Lopez 68

Painting by Jessica Gregory


E MAIL TO DAMNISO LOPEZ 68


My journal, 2006


Cypress winter red circled around
my kissed wrist,
a red icicle,
its coldness that froze my flesh
resisted the sun’s logic and logistics,
refused to thaw,
quoted the small print
in the scrolls of the old law,

So I, distraught, hammered
a nail
into atmosphere of air,
but the nail
bent
before was made a deep rent
in the scents blowing invisible
through the Heraclitean air.

The nail could not be driven in
far enough to stick in the air,
so the bent nail
fell to the ground.
straightened back into a straight shape
to sing
a dirge
about
my post-midnight tossing
about the loss of possibilities.


Duane Locke

Posted over on Poets Online