a
poem by
Luke Buckham
> bio
holding
back the flood
each day a younger, better death
each day clouds torn apart with perfect logic
on the soft hearth of eternity
each day an aborted book
imprinted with fading lipsticks
and afternoon bristles
in the feet of children like wet feathers
lifted in waves above tender sand-bars
in unlimited oceans
more comfortably ancient than their flesh
and then placed gently back
upon the drifting gravity of ocean floors
parking garages snarling with engines in the sun's
bare backyard
in the city beyond and behind them as they swim
careless as suns themselves
in their own constant unmaking
skeletal apartments
pour quiet lovemaking
out into glistening voids
through shimmering panes of glass
serene trees
gently mock human epiphanies
conversations find quick ignition on wide pavements
and die in the ant-wounded grasses
human shadows, evolving footprints of God
human shadows left behind by alert flesh
and roamed by cement and the senseless
granite benches where nobody ever sits
left behind in the audible, ambient slithering of
snakes
faltering engines
trapped stars, endless electricity
youth tumbles over endless cash registers
against the tired eyes it will never admit
holding back the flood
eclipsed social barriers fidget like sunspots
in crescents of slashed time
holding back the flood
whatever you suffer so much
has been accepted
by these improbable surroundings.
