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E MAIL TO DAMNISO LOPEZ 166
Simultaneously,
Her words
And the presence of yellow-striped-brown-bodied
Wasps
Flying out a damp hole, oozing with water,
The water reflected the colors of the dirt,
The water
Was black.
Her words:
Most of our communications
Have a content
That is contentless,
But passes as a content
Due to a consensus, and when
Content
Has other than
The imposed, alien, and false
Socially-constituted content
And has a true content,
The true content is incommensurable.
I poured more cognac
Into a glass
Socially constituted
As a cognac glass.
I admired the shape,
Large in the middle,
Smaller at top.
She said: You seem
To admire the sonic texture
Of words
More than their
Possible or impossible meanings.
From a thicket
Of wind-blown tall reeds,
I heard the sounds
Of an unseen moorhen.
She heard the sounds
Of a moorhen.
Under the influence
Of the sounds,
We hugged.
E MAIL TO DAMNISO LOPEZ 167
Her socially constituted consciousness transcribed
My transportation as an unprofitable self-interpretation.
She declared ex cathedra that I must have my car washed.
She interpolated the generous, although ironic, offer
That she would pay for the transaction. I countered
By asserting that the layer of dust on my car
Was a symbol expressing my love of the earth.
But she replied my intended meaning was not
Being transmitted to the quotidian minds. People,
She continued, respond as automatons
Of an unalterable meaning system that is preconceived,
If not understood. Popular Hermeneutics
Is what has been spoken into people, and is
Not based on any thing personal or experienced.
No one, she continued, will ever understand your
Oppositional stance towards current social formations.
Your dirty car will be interpreted as a symbol
For the lack of respect for what people believe
To be sacred, the automobile. You will be accused
Of decomposing and reconfiguring the sacred,
The known, and deemed as an enemy of progress
And in need of resignification. I replied, I
Love you in spite of our differing ideologies,
Therefore I will allow to pay for having my car
Washed. But the earth does move. I mean
I still love the earth.
E MAIL TO DAMNISO LOPEZ 168
Those moments
At the card table,
At the bank tellers window,
At Juliets window,
The day
The alternate route taken,
The Sunday of taxonomy
And ellipsis,
The time of
Wrecks and windowpanes
Could upon
Their sputter and passing
Could be said
To be hallucinations,
But it was the words
In the chonicle I kept that made
The moments news
And real,
Although something else,
More than likely,
Similar or different
Actually happened.
E MAIL TO DAMNISO LOPEZ 169
The prophetic value was due to the misinterpretation
And the misperception of what actually happened;
To put it more strongly, ignorance is what established
This truth called an eternal verity. Soon, this falsity
Became a fixed truth, a necessity for congenial
And friendly communication, a social obligation,
For to believe other than this lie mean ostracism
From the feast of life (See James Joyces The Dead).
But, we who belong to the post-avant-garde of
The post-postmodern poets know that all communication
Is alienation, and we also know of the undecidability
Of the semiotic. We new poets are not the anachronisms
Of the sixties who employed varied manipulations
And chicaneries to gain a little fame from an audience
That is a small minority. We know that no large audience
Will ever comprehend or respond to one of our opus
Or our opera. The obtuse audience for less-than-mediocre
Poetry will never be able to respond to our deterritorializations,
Aporias, disdain of collective emotional dispositions,
Our Transvaluations, our transgressions, our proleptic
pronunciamentos. So we write not to communicate
In the customary manner, not to be understood
By those who adhere to the axiologies of the old
Interpretive communities and their outdated message Systems.
E MAIL TO DAMNISO LOPEZ 170
Shadows are blocked light,
So many
Live by blocking light,
Blocking inner light.
I speculated on whether or not
Blocked inner light
Leaves shadows
On the brains neurons.
Blocked inner light
Must leave shadows,
But what is the shape
Of the shadow
That is left.
Is the shape
Of these shadows:
Dagger shaped,
Sword shaped,
Pistol shaped,
Rifle shaped,
Machine gun shaped,
Smart bomb shaped,
Atomic bomb shaped,
Hydrogen bomb shaped.
Duane Locke, Professor Emeritus of the Humanities, was Poet in Residence at the University of Tampa for over 20 years, and has had over 5,000 poems published, 14 print books of poetry, and 4 E books. He lives in Lakeland, Florida. (December 2006)
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