Duane Vorhees (Western Voices 2023)

Bio: Duane Vorhees lives in Thailand after teaching for the university of Maryland in Korea and Japan. Hog press, of Ames, Iowa, has recently published three of his poetry collections, GIFT: GOD RUNS THROUGH ALL THESE ROOMS, THE MANY LOVES OF DUANE VORHEES, and HEAVEN.

THE COROLLARY

 

Said a walking cathedral to a tabernacle waiting,

"Human typography is the distance

between the duty and the do.

Rascality's rewarded, righteousness ruined."

 

To which the tabernacle replied,

"You just judge the extremes

and not the mean between."

 

"Just trace all their lines and angles

to see how the axiom's derived,"

said the cathedral in response.

"Everything is proved by Euclid

and by Pharaoh's red plague."

 

"But the spine is the body's boney Nile,"

tabernacle maintained.

"Blood is not the only medium

through which the soul perceives."

 

And cathedral sighed.

"So, one of us will play acute

and the other the obtuse,

no matter the pattern."

 

"Then," tabernacle sounded,

"let us hypotenuse together

in honor of the right."

***

 

 

AND WE'VE NO ARTHUR

 

Mad merlins conjured

that excalibur

dubbed Tecknowledgey,

and any varlet

or fool can wield it

in malicious plots

'gainst our Camelot.

***

 

 

AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING

 

Innocence is the absence of experience,

while virtue is one's nature but honed and nurtured.

So is sin; it starts within, grows through practicing.

Even Locke needed both chalk and a slate to mark.

***

---

Western Voices 2023 :: Setu, February 2023