To the Artist's Page                 To our home page

To Luke Buckham's previous piece     To Luke Buckham's next piece

sky copy beauty not copy/the end

i bury my toes in the sand to feel the heat envelope me up to the ankles as the breeze turns cold for a moment, letting the flesh with it's back turned to me glide through my eyes without eyes staring back, and when i am not seen and i am comfortable then i am not where i am. my eyes get heavy in the swooping shrieks of seagulls snapping up tiny fish from the waves, slow and green today without crashing, and sit, made tired by the heat of the sun. when i wake the air is cold and i am in my shorts. streetlights blaze on the boardwalk behind me and illuminate the first mile of the ocean, then fades into blackness, the coiling white foam dissipating. there are metal detectors lying all around me on the sand, atop beach towels left behind. they are covered with suntan lotion and there are quarters strewn all around as far as i can see, as if a whole populace uprooted them from the sand and then found out that they didn't want them, so left the metal detectors and the coins behind, mystified at finding what they were looking for and not being satisfied by it. i look out toward the waves and see plastic bags strewn on the wet part of the shore, then move closer and see that they are jellyfish, their tentacles drying out looking like electrical wire, beached, and the low waves beyond them are a stunning sight--they are bobbing with miles and miles of trash, furniture, upholstery, foam, ripped leather, egg cartons, shells of televisions and computer screens, red plastic vials of white pills, the ocean is covered with color like trashy jewelry. it is strangely, defiantly beautiful. i like looking at it even though it horrifies me because it is incredible, it makes the ocean seem more infinite and pregnable at the same time, the depths between the floating leather couches with knives and arrows sticking out of them and gun cabinets with splintered wood and tiles of eggshell white seeming more frightening in their depth because of the landscape that covers them and looks tentatively walkable. if the vast quilt of junk got just a bit more cluttered maybe i could walk on the water. the sky looks copied when i glance at it quickly.

the streetlights seem more intense than usual, so bright that they are painful to look at, and i walk behind them onto the boardwalk behind the railing. i walk with my bare feet casting off a dusting of sand, splinters occasionally poking at my heels as my step becomes frantic, seeing no end to this boardwalk, the geometrically controlled wood going into apparent infinity. the sun rises suddenly and assertively, and it prickles the hair on my neck, sweat breaking out on my forehead, unable to believe the beauty of such a rapid sunrise. everything on the beach has turned liquid, all the coins and metal detectors flowing into each other in watery mirages, and now the ocean of debris stretches even farther into the ocean, absurdly beautiful. a splinter pokes into my heel as if the boardwalk is coming alive under me and i stop and turn my foot upward to pluck it out. as i pull it from the skin it squirms, becoming silver, my eyes hurting at the sight, i cannot believe that my terror has become such a low-burning excitement, and the splinter bulges tinnily in my hand and squirms out of the skin with an erotic sensation, and i see that it's a fresh-water minnow, the tiny fish landing on the boardwalk and drying up in the sun, then squirming toward the ocean, it moves with incredible speed, i start to cry softly as i watch it go, and impossibly i follow it's path as it drops off the side of the boardwalk and lands in the sand, then wiggles down the beach toward the ocean, becoming lost for seconds at a time in the silver of the beach, which is now becoming nearly entirely liquid metal, the tiny scales catching sunlight and swimming through a mirage, then i see the water spout with an explosion, then another, objects steaming and shooting fire, and i know that the minnow has reached the ocean. i turn my eyes away from the water as it's mass of objects starts to hiss, and i see a human form in the distance, so far away that it looks like the air itself is fidgeting, forming an orifice, but he moves closer and i see a metal grid in his belly like an artificial ribcage holding his guts in tension. it's a bum steering a stolen shopping cart, i see as he moves closer. he must be collecting cans and bottles. when he comes close i see myself sitting on the shore of a lake with a beautiful girl, wanting so badly to kiss her that sweat grew heavy on my forehead and ran into my eyes. the wind got more of her than i did, fluffing her hair, it was windy that day and the clearing that we lay in was a circle of flattened goldenrod. we looked at each other only occasionally and the tension was palpable but we didn't touch the pulp of the air, the sogginess of it that invited us, a suddenly cored apple hanging in the air, and i reach out my hand and put it on the bum's shoulder, thinking of all the tenderness i have lost and hoping that i won't waste it anymore. an androgynous face, grizzled and fallen into silvery sexlessness, looks up at me and i see that the shopping cart is piled with seagulls. he loves them in their deadness, their calm end, and he holds them up to me with his eyes scaled over, not grinning psychotically of looking sorrowful, just bland, holding them up for my inspection. my hand is trapped on his shoulder, a mouth of diseased flesh grasping at me through his sweater. his pants fall down with a hollow noise on the boardwalk, his belt plunking on the miles of boards, and i back off, upset, and see that the crotch is a fold of hairless flesh, no torn rose or shriveled penis there, just an empty crotch with a crease that is sown together in it's cells. i look toward the ocean and it is empty of debris, the waves pounding but serene in their distance. i look toward the bum and see only some spilled popcorn, the beach is clean. i feel that i have built a wall and torn it down. i think the town that i cannot see is burning behind me. i look to the sky to let my vision clear and the clouds are eerily motionless, i have to deny what i see there, the familiarity of it. I FEEL THAT I HAVE BUILT A WALL AND TORN IT DOWN IN THE SAME MOMENT

i walk on a summer-lit white concrete walkway and feel the memory of what happened afterward, the sand clenching on my feet, frozen, my veins glowing dull blue through my skin, and i see a glass door ahead of me. expecting to enter a factory for a few hours of work, but when i open the door and close it i am in an instantly familiar hotel room, and i turn to see the walkway swallowed by snow behind me. i close the drapes and there is a black velvet dress hanging in the line where the curtains meet, pasting out the thin vertical glow of the sun that comes through them. the girl who will wear the dress lies behind me on a bed that is pushed up next to the wall, a wall of copied panels of fake wood filled with tortured abstract faces that i see hovering above her, the patterns derived from real wood but ringing false in my vision. she's asleep and i'm afraid she'll always be, so i take off my clothes and put on her dress, velvet gliding pleasantly over my skin, the chest and hips collapsing around my thin frame as it settles over me like the gripping hands that you fear in a mist in a dream, a comforting murderer. i turn toward the mirror and i'm disappointed in the awkwardness of my reflection. i sloppily put on her most garish lipstick, then powder my face and line my eyes crookedly. when i look in the mirror she's! staring at me in the background with her body perfectly still and her eyes so cold that i can't tell if she's dead or just waking up, and i remember her going blank so many times, sagging in my arms as i stared at what might as well have been television static in her eyes. then i remember seeing her vivid and perfect in a bathtub that she prepared for us, and when i entered she was looking away from me with an expression of pained joy on her face, and for a moment that lasts even now i didn't know if she could see me and was looking away to be cute or if she hadn't noticed me yet. the steam curls in my memory, it is not a wall. i look around and she is still asleep, i hate seeing her framed in the background of the mirror it's like an open-casket wake. but i kick the bed and she stirs, blinking at me wearing her dress as i turn up the stereo with one hand, the knob turning and everyone in the hotel lighting up with startled trembling life as i do, marvin gaye blasting as she laughs hysterically and the bed shakes with her laughter. she says i look beautiful and that i can even wear her underwear if i want to, which i do, but as i pull it from the drawer the room is erased. then i am sitting at a desolate desk at the beach and all the comfort of familiar paperweights and typed and handwritten papers are being blown away by the wind. the pair of underwear in my hand may have changed color, i can't remember, and there are watches falling out of it, spilling onto the desk with metallic clunks. a drawer slides open by itself and i will not look down into it. then i do and there is in the bottom of the drawer a large photograph that fills perfectly the bottom of the drawer, and it is the sky, my eyes trembling so intensely that it may be moving, the clouds may be rushing with hurricane speed, but i kick it closed and it slams shut with the sound of someone sobbing into a pillow or into a lover's shoulder. i am tired and my elbows slide across the desk, my head thumping softly on my arm, the bones still intact and the flesh clammy.

a friend and i are laughing helplessly in a kitchen as i tell a story of making love to my girlfriend on a bathroom floor and noticing a burn in my ass during the act. i still see her standing by the sink pushing her hair back, her breasts always surprisingly large outside her unrevealing clothes, the noise of water mellowing our voices as i scrub the toothpaste off my back, laughing and explaining to her that while we were on the floor i sat on a tube of toothpaste and it covered my ass with a minty, refreshing burn. i ask her worriedly if she thinks it will prevent cavities. the room still stirring in our energy beyond the stove where my friend and i laugh, potatoes frying in the pan, the smell delicious and calming. i go to the window suddenly and poke my head out, and realize what's been irking me--the sky is xeroxed, the clouds still motionless, the clouds so plentiful and detailed that it took me all these years to notice that it has been the same sky for a long time, and i can't pinpoint the moment when it stopped shifting. i feel that i have torn down a wall and put it up again, but can't retrace my life to the point at which i left it standing and prevented the orbit of the earth from following me into the new day. i remember my grandmother sitting playing solitaire with the same basic expression on her face for years playing solitaire, the designs on the cards blurring and fading under her hands, watching the weather report every day and never going out. then i remember her in the annoying unjuxtaposed green smells of the vegetable garden with the sunlight on her, her hair tied back with a handkerchief and her face still beautiful, her hair fading blonde, not yet grey, and i tried to force the garden back into her eye! s when she lay stripped of her ability to speak, the sky still shifted behind her and i didn't have to think about whether i had frozen it. the sky isn't a damn xerox--i just heal slowly.

To the top of this page