Poetry from Duane Vorhees

LENSES 

I was one with those voyeur stars; 

I had eyes and thought I could see 

through the hollow invisible NotSaids 

that keep the planet orderly. 

But “Orbit’s disjointed!” they say. 

I need a new optometrist 

“Magnifiers assemble the blaze! 

the noose rope already twists!

and our sky’s unconstellationed! 

we’re free to do within our chains! 

and we hold too fast to conditions! 

we must more dearly count the change!” 

So, should I rage 

or should I grieve 

in my omniscient grave? 

MOSQATHEDRAL 

(Roma/Mecca amalgaMates) 

You bachelors and spinsters: 

this Our, O disjoin us not, 

identitied opposites. 

Our Sames mediate Others. 

This Feast of the Unity 

of Captive Diversity. 

Summers harmonize winters. 

THOUGHT AND ACTION: 

the rise of Brit lit 

Pious poets would drink quicksilver despair: 

since Creation beggared imagination, 

they resignedly would abandon their craft. 

But secular old Petrarchus schooled Spencer, 

and Shakespeare knew, even while still in Avon, 

that, to surpass, he must teach his verse to act. 

JUST ONE = EITHER ONE

Impossibility:

like “a dove

can’t be,” disproved by just one sky.

Permanent is not eternal.

Now is not forever.

To circumstance adjust

frost, flood, dust,

Comdition isn’t definition.

Energy matters / matter energizes.

Conception itself conceives.

Is always was.

Life lives with no conception.

Posit amy sky

to prove

the dove’s

possibility

–or the crow’s

LAWS ARE THE CUCKOLDS, ALAS

1.

Laws

are to

lobbyists

as cuckolds 

to coquettes:

Effort and

ingredients

define all effects.

Law 

resembles

justice,

as cuckold

seems husband,

But

greatest counterfeit

can’t equal

or intend.

2.

Seduction

begins as a quest

abetted by a con

leading to conquest

3.

Experience

inverts

education:

The final test’s 

done first,

then the lessons.

4.

justice

stiffens into lawform

melts in passion’s heat

dissipates

back

into myst  ery

just/ice

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