Poetry from Duane Vorhees

HER BARBWIRE LIPS: Why is my I not the same I as our I your I their I et ceteri? Let’s meet any whensday where my we invites our them to break bread with their them (us!) and Is together are. Iless weness incorporates theynessthyness till allness is. But beware: I begets they if we neglects me (ourusness minus myness), so any part of(or)part from Iness may well martyrize my we :HER WATEFALL EYES

HAIKU IN SONNET

Blots advertise coming austerity.

Cross farmers and their inner flatterers

spring back into kinetic energy.

Skies are, after all, false benefactors.

(Crows)

“Take careful stock of your remaining fruit,

dead orchards are abandoned and condemned.

Worms sap tunnels through sturdy apple faults.”

Home seems familiar. We don’t understand.

(to)

The ambitions stretched beyond my quarters,

nests of desires planted over mountains.

Young dreams imagined crisp, boundless borders.

Birds of hope winged themselves across oceans.

(call)

For all that wishful repast was ancient

food that I thought only mine and recent.

Blots cross spring skies: Crows

take dead worms home to the nests.

Young birds call for food.

GESTALT

to/get/her

my singularity

we reformed

to/get/her

A POEM INDEBTED TO A SERMON BY LUTHER

Banner and anthem. Flag and slogan.

Tattoos and a uniform.

Your circumcision and your tzitzit.

A tonsure and crucifix.

All the princes impose their standards

and propagate their watchwords

by which to their followers they’re known

and to which lord they belong.

FLIGHT OF FANTASY

The name’s Duane, a recovering romantic.

And this sonnet’s microcosmically me: intelligent

to an extent, yet unutterably inelegant.

The twisted yogapoetry falls far shy of the tantric.

But the doomed, pure gooneybird still tries liftoff,

flopping/jerking incongruous across your Canada Shield,

this tropical spirit beating its blunt clumsy appeal

against your ever-stubborn massif.

Frantic wings pump and flutter.

Their antics, doubtless, amuse: as awkward

as the balance between golden orator

and the motley’s drooling stutter.

The question, then: Can nature’s clownbird conquer the runway

and slide into sky’s butterandgoney?

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