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.

a chipmunk sniffing
at the meat left on the driveway
of my wasted lives
is more sharp-eyed
than any immortality:::::

fresh from a car accident lip-lock
my spirit walks on the ceiling
and thinks the ceiling is a wonderfully decorated floor

Two 2nd thirsty Madelines

have you my darling
hold you against storms & rashes

stunned in a blonde web of softness
stung by a tiny moon
that pebbles around all young on flesh

hunger my darling
heave you against ships rainwilling

torn in a black
arabesque brigade
hunted in aisles
misunderstood
by the oh-so-understanding

hold onto darling
keep politics out of her mouth
hold onto darling
don't let her angel rain in wrong places

hunger for darling
oh
baby it's gonna be hard, ride it

Today I am in mourning

for those who have nothing to offer the world
but an obscenely malfunctioning sowing machine

for those who no longer wrap the daily newspaper
in the body of a fish

for those who receive packages of frozen birth control
in unreasonably loud mailboxes

for those who cry hosanna to a politician who has nothing
but a tea cup inside his head

for those whose hymens are regularly inspected
by men wearing religious hats

and for those who have never gotten drunk with a genius.

And I celebrate my grief
by raking myself with urgent, spiritual penises

I drink wine through a radio antenna

I plan to liberate everyone
using my voice, my beard, my prick,
a multitude of brilliant essays, and
the two fingers on my left hand that haven't yet stiffened
from years of hurling snowballs at blind librarians.

In the time it takes me to reach you
you will be raped by approximately 35,000 robots.
Also,
a redneck who will not even bother to eat me
has installed an enormous reptilian vagina in the center of my chest
with a new laser weapon that he's very proud of.
So we won't be visiting one another today:
we won't be making love to each other's girlfriends
on a bright blue tarp in the backyard
while Elton John plays in the background;
we won't be cooking steak with mushrooms and onions
for one another, we won't be performing
oral sex on one another, and we certainly won't
be roaming the town at midnight, or taking photographs
of the very pretty skunks who live behind the local pharmacy's dumpster.

*****

--luke buckham

Heaven # 2

This armchair is covered with breasts.
I can't help sitting in it for hours.
A nipple pokes at my anus
and the hairs on the chandelier stand up.
Ferns guard the lower corners of the room
spiders build webs in the upper corners.

The chandelier dims. The spiders descend.
The ferns grow higher as steam
feeds them through the cracks in the walls.
This is the best air I've ever tasted:
someone is cooking a feast in a distant kitchen.
If I can wake up in time to walk through
the smashed television screen, I'll make it
in time for scrambled eggs with salsa.

PORTRAIT OF MY FATHER AS A DEAD FISH

)you're floating in wrong directions, again dad(I don't have
a hand for yours to grab)your eye
is so dry in its stare, pike(I once had a mouth for you
[now it's going dry like your sight](the plate is soaring
under you toward, a rumor of light)I once had all to myself
a corner, of a field square as suns are round(th
is is the terrible end of all our dreams)th
is is a milky way with a black hole in the middle
hurling us around(this is a dad on beer)