Five Poems by Duane Vorhees

 

She came draped in birdsong

She came draped in birdsong
among those tender ponds they'd planted
for us
among our dressgreen lawns.
Immediately,
her smile feathered into action:
a fowler's net over us unwary all
(and I, admittedly, no less the nestling than another).
And when she'd left
our ponds in tatters,
our lawns gone feral again,
her shoes still twittered
in the new forest of I's

(some trees fallen, some blazed).

REPORTING FOR DUTY

Like the Snowy Egret,

at any given second--

always you will entrance.

To your brushy entrance

I am ordered to second.

I obey, I regret.

THIS IS HOW . IT ALL BEGINS

Mother Sky Aphrodite
slides into her nightie
(Silk. Black. Strobe-filled sequins.)
and glides like Ponds into bed.

Papa Earth rolls over once,
hugs her, humps her, then grunts,
groans, snores, snorts; sprawls like lead.

From their bedclothes crawls a Moon-faced
offspring, squalling till the dawn,

when a newer, brighter son
spits up in his spoon.

REGRETS

I'm sorry we never walked arm/in/arm,

but that was from my own defects
and not your guise.
Next to your lovely limbs I'm left un/armed and fallen.

If I never said you were beautiful,
then it was from my tongue's neglect
and not my eyes'
(I could tell you were lovely at once, but not tell you.)

Then I finally stripped down to humble,
paraded for you my regrets,
frustrations, sighs. . . .

Keep my rubble. 

You may require fill material.

POONTANG JUBILEE: THE OBJECT OF OUR INTERCOURSE

This diet of salsa and meringue

weds ricochet to boomerang,

wrecking ball to rocking chair.

Arquebus quells harlequin,

while balsa envies the hickory

and will urges the unwilling.

Where cutter’s bow ignores the buoy.

Like orangutans with the palsy,

we do that salsa and merengue.

(My proud mother ego muse wanted me to make a lyric that was silvery articulate, wanted me to create music that was wildly meticulous; id wanted to make magic, a heroic playboy image with a song instead that leered. – Duane Vorhees)

ONE ALMOST HAD IT ALL

Never a father.

Mom gone at 6, God at 10,

and friends undependable.

By 14 he was abandoned

by ambition

                                    i.e. greed

                                    i.e. rage

                                    i.e. desire

and then by caution,

then by expectation;

all restraining Order

shed throughout adolescence.

And so, at 20, finally,

                        the sage

released his winged virginity,

his last fettered vestige of convention,

and, thus, root- and boot- less,

unworldly godfree the youth

                                                w/o hope

                                                w/o remorse

poised on the ledge,

readied himself –

the world his world for the grasping,

that turquoise marble.

Well past his middle now

the weary cynic

stays

incomplete,

unshuckable;

a last aging snakeskin

contains him yet,

cuffs him to illusion,

thwarts his liberty.

Diamond innocence

alas

still clings,

its flinty integrity

intact.

Dismal.

Inviolate.

Duane Vorhees is an American poet in Thailand. He is the author of THE MANY LOVES OF DUANE VORHEES; HEAVEN; GIFT: GOD RUNS THROUGH ALL THESE ROOMS; MEMORIES ARE LINKED LIKE OASES; A CONSIDERABLE SHARE OF FELICITY: and THE WOMB AND THE BRAIN. He has taught various subjects in the US, Korea, and Japan and has dabbled in dishwashing, lifeguarding, acting, modelling, broadcasting, journalism, door-to-door sales, tool room management, and other activities.