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