Back to Luke Buckham's Artist PageTo the Artist's Page                 Back to the Unlikely Stories home pageTo our home page
highway95To Luke Buckham's previous piece     godfunk the agony restTo Luke Buckham's next piece


the life whose little door is swinging shut                     
 
morning with all its clanging odors
wafts over a marble populace
shining with the sweat of mechanism
ancient scents 
improbably drift out from neon diners
walls of metal bend audibly
elevators descend in granite walls
scales fall from eyes on sidewalks
drift through puddles tinted with gasoline and infinite sunlight
and are replaced willfully
park fountains bubble wistfully
someone's heart drops and wobbles like a stone in water 
through the shimmering linoleum floor of a bank
metal vaults are closed    wet shining eyes are opened
someone descends effortlessly into the belly of the earth
and comes back to the flaking, misty surface 
with kisses like napalm
with a heart full of impossible lavas
the heat of returning
the deathly-beautiful sprinklings of sun
cutting through pulpits and microphones
even the sun is impermanent
in the first moment of waking    its gases fidget 
on our bodies that will be indistinguishable
when the supernovas intensify the light
in searing colors 
galaxies roar down with their garish external shades
merely to spraypaint the vegetables in the supermarket
with unexplored solar systems
not one of us has begun to live yet
there's still a blank and unlined space
in the formerly airtight cycles of the clock
where the digits have not been penciled in
by the cruelty of factories
ineffectual streams of ink cover marble surfaces
for a fleshless but pulsating moment
and are washed away by geysers of plant blood
from seething fertile ground
in every day there is a lost second
a particle of fertile soil crowded by gardens
in which we all speak in the lost tongue
all m en and women 
are adam and eve
with empty bellies
every human being 
is an awkward child
every generation is the first human generation
a hand finds the innocent head of a puppy
cowering in a marble corner
fur rippling in the dead green light of an ATM machine
(this line will be wiped out by time
 when the febrile jaws 
 that munch the tar at twilight 
 come to take it 
 in their streetlit teeth)
and far above couples touching
with hands of pure oxygen and water
in waves of turgid salsa music
and scents of splinted clam-shells
a bird folds its wings 
with perfect inhuman confidence
and plummets with its hollow skeleton
rescuing itself from death on the pavement
by small unmeasured inches of eternity
a face screams instinctively 
behind the tall supermarket windows 
that catch the sun like a weak basket with loosening strands
and turns
into a violent orchid of spreading light every day           for a glistening moment
the air is visible       and like a translucent tidal wave
washing over us
forcing our fading candle-flames of hair 
back from the unfilled parenthesis of our faces
everybody on the streets forgets their family names
for a spreading moment
and adds the other pedestrians to their blood for comfort
life is so alien in the afternoon
that if anyone loses their familiar rhythm of habit 
for a moment       encased by nothing
their pupils bloom with a formidable crimson
and the secrets of their ancestry are remembered
and forgotten                    
music blasts from cobwebbed stereo speakers
and is smeared by the film-loop of eternity
everything that surrounds us is indescribably fragile
bricks are paper
but we remember when all the walls 
were thick as bank vaults
before the strained whispers spoke to us
before a world of sweating android preachers
completely ignorant of each other's desires
pounded pulpits in the belly of an earthly hell
flesh blooms with flickering irritated light 
beneath drifting clothes
tides of cloth that cover us
and weep to be unwoven
faces form thin labyrinths in the air
nothing can be traced back far enough
timelines come to a halt
like a piece of sidewalk chalk 
worn down to the aching fingers 
that have traced it over the cloaked earth
I want to carve your marble-blue body
with my hands of white granite
with their turgid interior flecked by blood
reaching to the thin exterior
stones in our blood like asteroids
colliding
the flower-bulbs of eyes ignoring the newscast
trembling instead at the foot of surging galaxies
that spread like oil in water
on the curve of the sky
jet exhaust tracing its way 
blooming spreading
over a girl's bare shoulder at an outdoor restaurant
blooming
spreading
nothing is dull
eyelids and lashes open like blades
traps for an animal that wants to step into them
and be freed of walking forever
hands slide over cold tables
pass paperwork
everything is broken and reborn
clocks are punched
time is never quite redeemed
hands tremble as they proceed 
toward the cruel green digital hours
sunlight recedes over the tar
drawing in the atmosphere
and shimmering, shooting away like a jellyfish
unquenched longing eclipses the senses again and again
I was born in facile boundaries
my country is not a country
spiritual limbs 
ache for the lapping of vast oceans
nothings stands still
minutes glisten
minutes
surge
nothing has been left out
my face leaves an imprint on your face
sometimes it is crueler 
than the rest of nature
we both glow
like freshly fallen meteorites after passing through the feverish layers 
of the calm and volati le atmosphere
the noise of waterfalls in the park
joins the blinking of your eyes
your eyes are violent water
someone falls through skeletal buildings in a dream
and wakes up on sheets rubbed with fertile soil
far under the crust of earth
families cry to be released
emotions eclipse reality 
and drape it with horrifying light
light that is a scalpel 
tingling
vibrating   waiting for a steady hand
in the surgeon's dish
the eyes that look become the eyes that create
man is a tiny god in unreachable pain
treebranches bend to be climbed
a child ascends them
and ages indescribably as he ascends
the eyes of girls on pavement become wet stones
in the stream-bed of his growing vision
traffic is suddenly nonexistent
in its otherworldly persistence
the desire to die will never be fulfilled
the desire to live is stronger than a river
it rushes through my arteries
carrying messy histories
in these! streets it is misplaced
but misplaced like a piece of nature
human emotions
swelling
like tides thrown up by a meteorite
to cloak the grey cities in sweating green-blue water
the vast and unreleased weeping 
goes up to join the water cycle
tears unshed
are grasped by spilled solar systems during the night
and pulled like a thorn of frozen liquid 
from your body
the bed you wake up in belongs to a stranger
who carves their appearance 
into a mirror gleaming with gasoline
and everything created by God
and everything created by man
is horrifying and beautiful, a fang that punches through calm ozone
in a stagnant neon afternoon
there is blind shivering beauty 
like a constellation wrenched loose and disassembled
in the fighting of wars
continents drift toward each other like timid lovers
blades rust at the foot of jungles
greed forces love to become violent
stagnancy forces love to become rampant
an! d love descends down 
through the bubbling of park fountains
and into the molten core of the earth
even the eyes of pigeons
bloom with a cold flicker like mica
that is love
sunlight glides on your skin of granite
the sun torn loose from infinity's energy
from God's energy that is a pain 
more immense than a spreading star
from man's pain which is a joke under that star
blades become elastic
at the foot of jungles
intercoms spout false newscasts
ears fill with molten lava
the earth surges with mucus
at the monotonous sound
gravity is utilized       not defeated
streams of jet exhaust 
bloom and spread behind your timid smile
a popping noise
like the entire galaxy 
being forced 
into the pipes that feed a water fountain
continually reoccurs
almost everything we do on a daily basis 
is insane
balancing checkbooks      as cirrus clouds lovingly slash the sky
sunlight falling like an anvil on hands that drift over restaurant tables
on a porch where the sky laps our skin like water
and the major diseases are far away
endless blades
ineffectual medication
people playing chess on park grass
leaves dying
and falling with sounds louder than engines
on the stiffening grass
as the earth perks up
and languishes in afternoon
clothing is wrenched off 
by the flirting gravity 
of other uninhabited planets
that send their gravity like a lesser sun 
through the untelevised stratosphere
every day
soil from the garden of eden
that has never departed from us
dribbles from a child's eye-socket as watery mud
and their parent's hand enwrapping theirs is far away
like the echoes in the fever dream
of a fever that never ends
but shoves its fertile shapes
of stone breaking into sudden grey soil
through the undulating street 
of rippling wet tar
cement mirages
of other people who share its spirit
and all want 
to get the hell into and out of your body.

To the top of this pageTo the top of this page