Confessions Everyone’s a politician, and everyone’s a journalist. And none of us has inhibitions and we all have our tales to twist. I went to see my physician in her office inside my tomb. For practice, she writes out prescriptions just to kill the kids in their wombs. My preacher makes his confession to the girls who are blonde and young. He lays on his hands, as his mission, and exhibits his gift of tongues. Professors write dissertations in order to hide all the facts. And if you want real information, --oh well, you needn’t even ask. At open mic, that thin co-ed who said she hungered for new verse (You I’ll fill, said I, “your poet.”) starves -- but swallowed my Complete Works. Was Jesus tacked to an easel so Romans could paint him later? They staged the acts of apostles just to build wings for their theaters. And everyone had truth to twist till they convinced me I was cured. But when I asked, my psychiatrist sneered, “Why no, I’m not even bored.” Dowser Once I was proudly regarded as the foremost geographer of You: I surveyed the careful topography as I mapped your features anew, measured each promontory encountered, and charted every defile. Many times I plumbed for your treasures and glad continued my earthy research. And I knew I could move my stretched willow out to discover the sweet waters below. But now that I live in exile from You, now that your landscape has gone, I find it was not your true geomancy I’d learned. For though I’m sure that it was your well I discerned, I could never divine the source. That Y In Miser Is Me: A Melodrama I had thought to hoard your beauty, to store it safe and proud in that place where you’d amused me and none else would be allowed. But you crept out through the tower and you burst out into World. Now you perfume your universe with circus, peacocks, clouds… while I stay locked in duty with my memory and my (should almost I wrote. A miser’s booty lost!!! Hyperbole for the horde.)
DUANE VORHEES lives in Thailand but grew up in the United States. Hog Press, of Ames, Iowa, has published three of his poetry collections (HEAVEN, GIFT: GOD RUNS THROUGH ALL THESE ROOMS, and THE MANY LOVES OF DUANE VORHEES).
Confessions 