Gifts from a horse in the dark

I know that powerful men and women unite in government chambers, plotting to put the twinkling of their little minds under our skin, so that the surface will seep under the surface and all but the surface will disappear; so that all that is, will be surface.

We will fight them by throwing tomatoes at the windshields of their black automobiles while they drive over the corpses of pigeons whose bloodied feathers decorate the streets. And the pigeons will be resurrected at the proper moment, so that the clouds will rain the white clay of their droppings and soil the suits of police officers. Another life will come out of the stricken air to rescue us.

There's a wet place between known dimensions where we'll lie down together the moment this is over. The whispering air, in that in-between place, is a circuit that crackles with an electricity not of this earth.

Those who die in peace prevail, through the lungs of those who breathe their spirits through the eyes of peace. Those who die in peace remain in peace, though they wrap powerlines around their ephemeral bodies, and rampage through rich neighborhoods, channeling all the dying sighs of the guilty. Those who die in war and cease to exist are carried bodily out of the country by a hurricane.

There's a forest path and a gap in the air. A place, where a hand can reach a dresser drawer, from another world. The chambers of lichen-coated rock will slide open with a mineral sound, and we will take off the garments of this existence and put on the chalk-blue underwear scattered from flying saucers.

The hoofprints of light, beaten into swift entrances at the forest's edge, are gifts from a horse in the dark. The golf courses, where lightning bugs are strewn like little cities, take on water from the air, and the ghosts of forgotten birds swim soundlessly through the back of your neck.

I know that those who embrace these mysteries are blessed beyond comprehension; that they will become fearless in their last hour; that none shall own or control their bodies, and that a terrible funneling of inner light shall come from their mouths and sear away the commands of the government.

And that their names shall be blessed by the ghosts on darkened golf courses, and in the places where streetlights have been shot out by rifles, crackling weakly like eyes trying to come back to life. And that they shall heal the broken hands of those who were called their masters, and that those hands will roam the sand of beaches like spider crabs for centuries, forgetting how to swim, until they come to believe that their healing is final, and kneel at the feet of their victims, who disappear into thin air at the moment they are worshipped.

--LUKE BUCKHAM