I am worried about the heat flagged down by mercy
that makes red dust whirlwind itself
in perfect DNA spirals
on skinny country sidewalks.
I am worried that walking there
will fill my head with babies
and your belly with leaves.

And I am worried like a broken priest
when you come to me,
soft-bellied and sensual,
tense as a newborn crying.
I am worried that I will make love to you for ten hours
behind a guardrail
and make you very late in coming home
to all your other husbands.

And I want to meet you in a whirlwind
on one of those broken paths
nameless and alone, unable to see
one another, feeling in the powerful dark
sunlight.

I am worried that my voice goes on too long
in the wrong places, and stops crucially
when it would otherwise
become a part of your body.
I am worried that my voice cannot
love me in an echo from a woman's body,
and I beg you to shut me up
with your hands beside my knees
and your rear-end on my mouth
while you rip up the grasses, solemnly
like an angry child.

Who will kiss my sister's hands
and witness the wind through my brother's hair

and who will play the violin for them
when the violent go to bed

and who will pray for them
in the night sand

when the telephones die

and who will comb my tiny sister's hair
and care for the fracture in my brother's eye

and polish every rough to a jewel
as the sun is a radio sky

I hate that young man:
he wants her to keep his cunt
in her back pocket,
and he hears it laughing.

She is no longer slender enough
to move through a modern town
without painting a few smoky people
with her non-vital organs.

And I hate that boy:
when she feels herself becoming plump
with every movement on the sidewalk,
she also feels him, following her.

I want to take out the cords
from his excited neck
and watch him wobble around like a sick turkey,
trying to look at her.

And I want her to place her breasts, so sore
from being hunted, in my hands
by bending forward, to rest her brain
in my lap, while he watches from a wrecked triangle:
the brokenness of the stupid shapes
he's created in the air with all his watching.

the kingdoms of the world will try
to get their buckles onto you
(you've gotta steel inside
their infant firepower)

police parenthesis
put a hole in my mouth-area
so that my mouth can eat other mouths
in a mouthlessness without end

there are no kingdoms under you
there are no kingdoms over you

but who can stand inside their firepower?

the kingdoms of the world will fall
into a pulsing kingdom hole

but who can stand secure inside their longing?

and who will braid my sister's hair
and who will touch my brother's voice
and who will kiss the walls inside the ruins

Who in the trees
will come down to the beach
to kiss you in front of the sea
the sea that is covered in beautiful trash

While a woman in a blanket heals my wounds
and who will lay your blanket on the sea
Ms. Melody
and break your sister on the sands
while the radio plays:

And her epic fingers,
and her legendary torso,
and her feet smelling of limes my love
punctuated by sweet sounds dot dash;

who will stand behind the lens and,
affectionately,
let her pound her pianos with hammers
in a little boy's dream while the radio sleeps.

my little sister sleeps on the porch
(while we all sit inside, loving her)

Florida is a little blonde shoe
at the foot of her bed

while the antennas drown in sound
I kiss her dirtyblonde hair--

--pray protect her from the sound in my head--
pray protect, from the whistling also blonde

boys in the street
who whip one another with thin

shredded pieces of truck tires.
Then in the haze

between stations of light, the air;
the sweet air turns brunette

and all the crumbled systems go to war.

looks
like
you've
got
a

big
handsome
clitoris

step
inside

we'll
find
you
a
belt
of
tongues

what

was

the

first

word?

and, um, this is dizzying to ask, but

how

did

it

happen?

I'm
trying
to
look
dignified
and
serious

(as
if
I
will
be
important
to
futurepeople)

for
the
girl
who's
sketching
a
profile
of
my
big
nose

if
you
continue
to
use
that
facial
cream
to
make
your
self
look
younger

your
face
will
shrink
into
a
tight
little
rectum
of
mottled
and
distorted
features

surrounded
by
overly
conditioned
hair

a
head
that
looks
whole
bursts

and
reveals
its
brokenness

the promise of religion

I
can
put
you
in
the
center
of
history

with
your
dick
in
your
hand

how dangerous it is to hope

sunflowers on the roof
a mouth full of salty dressings

a hot shadow holding you in a hailstorm.

how dangerous it is to love

two legs that brush each other in a dugout
oil running down appeased volcanoes

the dark under the eyes
stricken with sudden youthfulness.

some
carry
prettiness
and
know
it

some
carry
prettiness unknowing

some carry the world
and of others who don't
some know it

some
prettiness carries nothing
some

prettiness carries
us all

everyone's fucking to forget the strangeness,

start turning your key in wet tar on an endless road,
crawl into your mailbox,
with blue feathers sticking out of your rectum,

the emptied pools are viewing us
with lucid emptiness
grey and invisibly stacked

cats are eating the tuna sandwiches
we dropped on the tiles
on our way to the hard empty pool
where our greater eyes were waiting
in the future's stupid blood

Crumbling agenda celebrations

Wednesday, brain-fuck the government
beautiful talented women are walking face-first into my cell
there's a church organ old in my wall
skinny supermodel doors open up like cellophane
the salad-making days are over
and we're on the edge of making sense

tell-tale floors are bleeding pagan sacraments
put both sets of labia in my mouth play that saxophone
movie floors
I am a young century with a hard-on
forming in an oceanic mouth

picture us far behind banana-filled dumpsters
making out in our army clothes
Thursday arrives like a thumb
each finger is a holiday

I dreamed all the oceans were frozen, (beautifully,)
that I led a party of children out onto the ice.

Some of the waves were still intact, caught roiling.
And the ice was foggy in its distilled, flat places
but the children pointed out creatures here & there,
visible & like paintings. And water began
to come up & down out of my eyes.

We took out our sharp equipments
& started to go to work on the ice, sad to disturb

we had a lab back there in the white dunes
to fill with thawing animals.

*****
--luke buckham

A RIDE

I'm riding forward with my ribs
on the handle of a shopping cart
down a long tar hill.

A little child in a bright blue jumpsuit
stands inside the shopping cart
gripping the bars with his tiny hands.

Every few seconds we grin at each other
I give him the thumbs up
the speed increases. Gas stations & haystacks
are melting & upending
on either side

and all around us
airplanes are silently plummeting
in all directions across striped acres of sky
their broken wings on fire.
This is all a great show for the kid. I like it too.

One of the wheels on the shopping cart
is a bit crooked, and it wobbles wildly
(the kid doesn't care; he giggles when we fishtail);
I have to keep leaning to the left to keep us straight
so we don't crash into a swamp
or roll slower into the snore
of the everyday world.

MESSIAH

There was once a town in which only one man was homeless.
Being unique, he began to think of himself
as the savior of mankind, but he often doubted his powers.
He slept his nights in a pile of cabbages
behind a local supermarket.
One night he woke up covered in rotting leaves and heard
a human groaning in the air. He went out to find its flesh.
And presently he found himself
on a street where there was no traffic.
On both sides of the street, stretching
as far as he could see in either direction,
were crucified people, nailed to the telephone poles.
Their groans of exhaustion and agony
were the underbelly of the humming air,
and their blood ran on the pavement, fingering
its way into cracks. He stopped to look at them
one by one, trying to look into their eyes,
but they seemed not to comprehend his presence.
And he spat on the feet of the crucified,
watching his saliva run into the lips of the wounds
on their feet, so that, if a road crew should ever
come along and take them down,
they would be able to walk again.
And half-asleep in pain-shock under
streetlights that looked like spacecraft,
the crucified began to sing,
and terrified their savior with their song.

Questions about water

What did the water say?The water said something about a great silence
before the greatest event of all time;
an event that is now unknown and unreachable.
And that a silence like that will never happen again.

How did the water touch?The water touched like a sleeping lover.

Where did the water go, and why did it go there?The water went up in the sky, to shield me from the sun.

Why are you slightly delusional about water?
Because I love water, and I want it to love me back.

Where do you go when you run out of water?I go to a closet deep in my house
and pray that the closet will fall down.
I pray for a flood to come in under the door.

Really?
Yes. I go to the securest place in my house
and pray for the house to be torn apart by water.

That seems harsh. When did you first find out about water?Very early on, I was put in a womb full of water.

But even Emanuel Swedenborg doesn't remember that!Whenever you point that out, I weep.
That is how I find out that I am made out of water.

Why do so many people talk about the flesh,
when the body is mostly water?They are afraid to remember
how quickly their life will run out
if that flesh is wounded. They must
convince themselves that the flesh is all there is.
They are afraid of the flood that lies waiting
just behind it.

What is your favorite way to drink water?Glass is made from sand; when I raise a glass of water to my lips,
I remember that I am drinking water from sand. I like that.
But I prefer to drink water from a small metal bucket.
I like the taste of water best when it is surrounded by metal.
That is my favorite way to drink water.

When you pour water into your mouth, it is no longer surrounded by metal.Someday I will be made of metal. Metal makes me
feel very clean and futuristic.

So there will be a remedy for the fear of water?When we're all made of metal, won't we be afraid to rust?
I can speak only for myself, and for everybody else
when I'm not feeling like myself.

But you speak for all of us when you speak about water, don't you?Sometimes I say foolish things when I am asked about water.

Could you explain that further?Probably not. I can only say that if you drink water very quickly,
you will get drunk, but differently. And that when we make love,
we mix our water with another's water.

Stop touching my leg. Why is there water and not something else?So that we might know that life is transparent,
and that we can see through it.