Letter to the Author: Luke Buckham
at aworminmywall@hotmail.com
And I will listen
Give me an ear down in the soil,
(for Bill Gnade)
let me hear the boiling of our core.
And my startled heart not add to the earth's damage.
Sorrow has gone so deep in me
that my soul has begun to fly.
Give me a hand that strokes ears of corn
like blonde toddlers born of my wife,
who likes snakes as much as butterflies.
Give me a hand that makes wine from dead bark,
sneaks quarters from behind the moon's ear.
Give me an ear for music, that I might hear
such instruments as never need make speeches,
such things as speak their only theme in holy whispers.
For the womb inside my ear has begun to break.
Give me a trumpet-sound like a cockroach's mouth.
Ear me an earth shaped around its drums,
five whistles from the cricket's legs before the kettle falls,
a body like blowing grass when false alarms sound,
an orange split-second painless apocalypse in one dawning pupil,
a planet made floating shards to set us free, the last chords
having been played for my ears that now are yours.
Samsara St.
From the bowling alley's sign
the light is dusty. Moths turn
on their fragile hinges in the salty air.
Inside an old man trembles under the weight
held in his hand. Marble impaled on his
fingers purpled by age. Pins crashing
like glassy tides. Hands upon hands upon hands
trembling. Everything is always trembling.
In a liquor store this afternoon I saw the cashier
cold as marble in the dusty light
stare down a woman's throat
as she brought a bottle; her hands
and her whole life sloshing
the singing liquid down to her veins
trembling. The cashier threw the bottle
down the aisle with his anguished eyes.
The glass shattered in a dream
where he believed in freedom.
He's paid to poison. Without looking up we all exchange
our dirty currencies. She shakes
with useless shame. Everything
is always trembling.
On the cliff-edge of a hotel bed
we ran our fabric fingers
over each other's threads, between each strand
of hair, between blue marble buttocks splitting
in dusty light, bodies rebuilt by tracing fingers
trembling. Everything
is always trembling.
(Copyright 2004 - All Rights Reserved by Luke Buckham - Reprints Permitted
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