David Buuck

David Buuck lives in Oakland, CA. He is the co-founder and editor of Tripwire, a journal of poetics (tripwirejournal.com), and founder of BARGE, the Bay Area Research Group in Enviro-aesthetics. Recent books include Noise in the Face of (Roof Books 2016), SITE CITE CITY (Futurepoem, 2015) and An Army of Lovers, co-written with Juliana Spahr (City Lights, 2013), along with the chapbook The Riotous Outside (Commune Editions, 2018). He teaches at Mills College, where he is the chief steward of the adjunct faculty union, and at San Quentin's Prison University Program, and is the Academic Director of the Clemente Course in the Humanities at Oakland Adult Career Education.

---

DISFIGURATIONS 1

Beyond the Reach of Satellites

Hundreds of, thousands of, tens of thousands of, hundreds of thousands of —

bodiless eyes, of flesh, of skin or sinew, of scarred and shattered limbs,

of skull fragments or kilometers of teeth with concertina wire floss or

electric circuit in torn mask of face without mouth, bins of organ-meat

or off-gassing mist-heat of overripe stomach content, numberless

passbooks and breastbones in the sludge, intestinal effluvia and

bacterium factory slurry, diseased ablutionary discharge in street

gutter overflow, bodies falling from blood-orange sky into boiling

seawater brine, each bomb embossed with your name or mine;

Artillery shells scattering arms legs torsos in fetid enclosure, zoo-loosed

rhinocerial beasts rumbling through concrete street, a general strokes

his pet tiger in closed circuit salon of sour date-paste walls, dipping

fingers in pools of wine aerating in emptied eye sockets, arsenic

wallpaper-glue vapors in pores of disfigured facial tremor, odor of jet

fuel and rotting gums, of acrid sweat-gland excretions and tank-gas,

the books broken and emptied of proper names;

Dead orchestra smudged across the black pitch, sound only of ghost-breath

or vocal cords strung taut on Prime Minister’s prized violin, viscera

crawling out of the stew pot, carved ivory bowl of ears inhaling sea

gust and bitter laughter, telegraph stylus chiseling into tattered treaty,

tonnage of functionary epidermis in lieu of backbone, severed index

fingers worm-grinding in pile or rolled in white phosphorus flour;

Anonymous iliac crest dipped in sauce of mushroom and vermouth, cheap

floral notes trapped in pensioned nose hair untamed by retinue of

blind adolescents with bare feet soaking in entrails of sow or

housedog or cousin, fever-blistered peeling skin of museum sponsors’

backslap orgy, palms glazed with creams made of marrow harvested

from street vendor cemeteries, a billion keystrokes gather in the ether

but fail to shield the grid from missiles greased with pigfat;

Olive trees dropping scorched pits to still-verdant earth, sweat-drenched

latrines excreting streams of bile and offal, desiccated skin-mote

storm in poisoned sky, flesh bubbling on arm or neck or exposed shin,

symphony of flies in rubble of canine whimpers, tiny hands with tiny

digits collecting shell casings marked with corporate death sigils;

Breached oil tankers spewing liquid carbon sea-life confined in coral in

hardware in containers stacked on ships flying under proxy flags,

confetti snow of torn work passes singed by butaneous breath falling

into rivers on fire, from the viewing platform bullhorn’d voices

screaming stocks are up, stocks are up;

Organs of still-living mortals descend from red-flame sky, making soup in

lipless billionaire mouth, much teeth snapping in jaws of tycoons’

private gardens, flesh of numberless dog, molten ribs of saintless

plinth, scent of burnt guava-skin in oxygenless air, newsprint sky in

lung-meat or capillaries, sharpened infant cuticles used by as-yet

undeposed CEO to pick teeth and clean what talons;

Murders of crows block out sky in undulating waves of red-black feathers

and carrion, serrated cattle on bomb-bent rebar spit, seared by

tongues of flame-thrower gunneries, rictal cackle from collapsed

cobalt mine, congealed memory of forced labor shovel-sweat,

pressurized ore entombed in guard-tower girding, from which scan

the panoptic fantasies of police;

Ticker-tape dysentery on stock market carpets embroidered with hair of

black market animal traffic, bullet train serving brain-drain for

business lunch write-off, tonnage of documents stuffed into dead

mouths, desquamated rain-soot flooding alleyways behind un-zoned

market stalls, container ship art-hold hedge fund tumescence,

emissary’s briefcase full of perfumed seawater and financial

projections, bees drowning in nocturnal emission of necktied arms dealer;

Child in prison cell shaping syllables of refusal on torn lips, broken wrist

stutters its testimony, asymmetric tally of bodies on diplomat’s tablet

at well-appointed table, cheese and figs and grapes and filtered water

in diamond-cut glassware whilst drilling into tar sands of bone and

bitumen, slow gravitational pull of burrowed lungs sucking at

centuries-old oxygen in the tunnels and the pits, strike a deal or a

match, a stone or a bullet, plastic bags adrift in the burning air of

vacated bazaar, a book without its pages flap helplessly in heat-wind

dust-storm, unsent letters of undead alphabets recast as charred

paper kites untethered from sound and shape of fugitive breath-

vowels;

Defense ministry bureaucrats red-inking their portfolios in well-appointed

conference rooms, feeding thin layers of dermis into devices

regulating the ratio of atrocity porn to pixelated op-eds, batteries of

sallow pundit remote control dipped in rubbing alcohol and gasoline,

from pampered lips emerge inkblot equivocations lathered onto

counterfeit bonds, zip-ties the tongues of servants tending to the

lacerated tendons of half-shrouded half-dead muscle, nicotine’d digits

fingering touchpad membrane, decrepit maps or night-tremored

bedsheets soaked in sweat and crude oil;

Freeport infrastructure held fast by non-binding trade agreements soiled

with poisoned wastewater, shipping corridors clogged with deflated

parachutes and cost-benefit risk analyst data-stream, red-veined

dragonflies gorging amidst the scorched wreckage and crushed

livestock, concrete bunkers shuddering from tremors of premature

death-rattle, on this side of death some non-dead dragging fractured

spines through cairns of gravel and molten lead, chopper blades

mimicking millions of Americans pecking at the feed with arthritic

skinless thumbs; 

Septic tank leakage into aquifer memory banks, wingless bird thew hurtling

into vacant lots of blade and threshing, century-old child's toy

trembles of its own accord, night illuminated by television glow of

aerial bombardment, liquid dead sun night of frozen tomb or

basement shelter, malformed affidavits of newborn sepsis, agentive

ghosts gasping in burn-pit exposure field, to kill a people you kill the

habitat, torn through the expanding necropolis a wound that destroys

time and the scar that remakes it; 

Rusted wrench-works in torturer’s anteroom, hail-storm of slingshot rocks

striking windows glazed with petroleum jelly, paeans to heavy

ordinance blaring from disembodied mouths on melting screens,

linguists in PR-firm bunkers at work on the updated euphemisms, the

forecast calls for MOABs and shrapnel fusillades, fuel pipelines leaking

the tears of limbless street dogs;

Charred corium or pelt-crust lining tent-walls, crushed mint in gums or leg

wound, eons of tracer bullets arcing through erased histories, pulsing

light or blood or rifle-fire in endless night, creak of bones stirring

beneath oxen plow, garroted ribcage held fast to flagpole by intestinal

knots, pesticidal grain of stale bread ration wrapped in soiled t-shirt

or faded family photo, thousands of death sentences dropped from

sky repurposed as cigarette papers or kindling;

Sound of drone or bomber or airdrop or helicopter or missile or projectile or

jet or death whistling ripping through sky, scattered DNA of mass

grave or beneath crushed ambulance, torn fingerprints in the debris

field, blast radius heat signature casting cement-wall silhouettes of

vaporized personhood, enteric nervous system enflamed by the

constant pings from beyond the reach of satellites;

Sullied alphabets sound-spat in classroom of plastic chairs forged in prison

sweatshop, handheld phones trembling with messages from the dead,

unexploded ordinance half-buried in village nursery tattooed with US

factory brands, from beneath collapsed schoolrooms faint echoes of

lung-borne song, toxic brown-breath’d hallucinations, yet and still

survival and defiance, girls holding hands around ancient tree, boys

playing soccer in makeshift pitch, from one or more quivering

hands waves the one flag not worth burning;

No metaphors, no symbols, no allegories, such writhing in severed extremity 

scrum so not a still-life nor engraved into rough-grained wood with

pallet-knife, the footnotes are silent trench-mouthed omens, to be

living-dead and have yet to die, to survive and have yet to survive, to

be left to rot and yet to have rotted, instead being laughter in beach-

sand, being called to prayer in godless valley, being hero of bedtime

tale, being flame having yet to expire;

Such that time too becomes obliterated, in the solar plexus or in the mouths

inside the mouth, pulsing thumbs swiping refresh for the spectacle, as

if to catch the ever-retreating present in backlit Minervan night, the

disorganized senses mined and recuperated for extractive algorithmic

administration, still the screams of the dead reverberating inside the

skulls of the living, unintelligible sound that nonetheless

communicates spectral propositions up against thought’s limits,

contrapuntal noise beyond the frequencies of long range acoustic

weapons of cops and jumbotrons, that against all this the energetic

force of rage could cut diamonds from concrete, might blast holes in

fortress walls, shatter the surveillance machines and fry drone

guidance systems, melt helicopter blades in cracked sky that crackles

with the static of uncensored videofeeds;

Illegible sentences engraved on penal colony ground-skin, scorpions in

agitated soil, new prosodies pulsing from abraded earth-wound,

scraping infected syllables into poems of irredeemable conflagration,

recitations producing flame from mouth and lung or apparitional

stanzas of dirt and ash in unscannable windstorms, crystalline split in

time at exact moment when glass shatters in a thousand boardrooms,

surge of prism’d solar flares, balance sheets dissolving into actuary

mycosis, from within the charred mortuaries dead lips emerge from

torn body bags to spit and hiss Matar a la Muerte; 

Is broken, is crushed, is flattened, is gutted, is destroyed obliterated

incinerated, is razed and shattered, is firebombed or exploded, is

“eradicated exterminated annihilated,” is “damaged beyond repair,” is

“reduced to rubble,” is “wiped from the face of the earth”;

Is death, say death;

Is al-mawt, say al-mawt;

Is mirin, is mauta and mout, is mort, muerte, morte, or moarte, is smert and

halál, kamatayan and Sǐwáng, is aihtidar, wafa, and masra, say

mahvan, say marg, say ölüm, maut, taug and mah, say jug-eum,

sayhkyinn, mr̥tyu, iṟappu or cái chết, say der Tod, mutuwa, or

dhimasho, say fahafatesana, pati, make or kematian, say lanmò,

zahybelʹ and Cāvu, say ma ra, say Yememochawi,

say geerida, say Miquiztli, say heriotzais, say is was and is is and say enough —

And every tainted pixel, every scar in every street, each sulphureous gash in

the earth, gaping wound of decimated city and village and

encampment, each charnel house emitting defiant fumes or ululations,

every ocular nerve drained of its afference, every last word trapped in

collapsed lung or torn thorax, each last poem scratched into dirt or

mud-walled tomb, endless rain of soot and epidermal cell-matter,

chorus of wails echoing across occluded sky, every shadow cast by

every bomber, each manuscript aflame in every destroyed university,

releasing ink-stained heresies of memory and carbon, each poppy on

each unmarked grave in numberless cemetery, each disembodied and

distended throat choking on human ash, inside-out esophagus

vibrating vocal cords with last wind of speech, screams of such

intensity that smash all camera lenses refracting the light of dead

stars, every last thing save for the despairing yet defiant cry of

borderless song —

---