Thursday, May 24, 2012

Crazie



image borrowed from bing


Crazie
I find crazy
in the damnedest places,
in my yogurt,
in my jeans pocket
after it has gone through the wash,
in the middle of my quilt
while investigating an odd lump,
as a mystery ingredient
in my breakfast cereal,
borrowed from bing,
stumbling onto some perverse website,
behind my dusty hiking boots,
in the thumb of my gardening gloves,
in a mouse nest
within my old paint cabinet,
on the shelf right between
NIGHT AT THE OPERA
and
PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT, 
in my socks drawer,
while reading William Burroughs
or Hunter S. Thompson,
or Philip K. Dick,
in the medicine cabinet
at my best friend’s house,
in the cat box,
in my treasured Roy Rogers
lunch pail under the Buck Rogers
decoding ring, on the seventh page
of the first issue of Conan the Barbarian,
in Frank Frazetta’s biography,
in Woody Allen’s mind,
while listening to John Belushi,
reading a Jim Carrey tweet,
within the wound in my right leg
five inches into the hematoma
after crashing through my deck,
in Taffy’s dog house
four years after she left us weeping,
holding her while she reluctantly
received the prick of death,
in the desk drawer of a Motel Six,
under my spare tire,
in the backyard where we buried
the cat from ten years ago,
in every production shot
from every theatrical play
or film I ever appeared in,
in an old cigarette ad
John Wayne did for Chesterfield,
in the bottom of my golf bag,
wedged into the thumb webbing
on my high school mitt,
under the Hudson hub cap in my garage,
in the plain brown envelope holding
the last hand-written note
my mother left me before she made
her last trip to the hospital,
and the translucent mystery man
who held my hands tightly
just before the hour of the wolf. 
Glenn Buttkus
May 2012


Would you like to hear the author read this poem to you?

17 comments:

Awdures said...

Oh my gosh what a stroke of genius! I find crazy in the randomness of my kids but I love the reference to priscilla. One of my all time favourites! Such a romp through your head Glenn thanks for sharing!

Janine Bollée said...

Awesome.
I'm totally out of breath, like you must have been after reading all that aloud in one go.

Very impressive workings of your inner mind.

[your verif is difficult: third time lucky].

David F. Barker said...

An extraordinary, entertaining romp - very much a stream of consciousness. And I love it!

David F. Barker

Brian Miller said...

crazy is as crazy does, def some interesting places to find crazy and a wicked pace to your thoughts and connections as well...

Daydreamertoo said...

Pheeeew...that is some walk through your crazy thinking. Loved all of it.
Some sad, some funny, some huggable.
What a write, what a read!

Claudia said...

ha great stream of consciousness glenn...esp. loved the..translucent mystery man
who held my hands tightly
just before the hour of the wolf..very cool

Anonymous said...

Absolutely brilliant .... great piece of stream that carries you in along in its wake

Victoria said...

Glenn, I'm breathless, and there are so many lines in this I wanted to comment on as I read it. There is a unique connection between us all in the understanding of craziness that seems to make up the substance of every day. Just wonderful!

Shawna said...

This is my favorite section:

"reading a Jim Carrey tweet,
within the wound in my right leg
five inches into the hematoma
after crashing through my deck,
in Taffy’s dog house
four years after she left us weeping,
holding her while she reluctantly
received the prick of death"

Dave King said...

This swept me along like an ocean wave. I shall have come back to hear it.

vivinfrance said...

That's one heck of a consciousness, wildly streamed into a cascade of threads. I salute you.

chris said...

This is brilliant! Just brilliant.

Beachanny said...

I love this - it was like unraveling a web of thought - connected loosely. Perfect illustration, in my mind, of what Joyce wanted to create. Free associations that lead the reader far and wide through enough landscape to build that stage set, to see and feel more and more vividly than description could ever do. Really well written!

hyperCRYPTICal said...

Brilliantly crazy!

Anna :o]

Maude Lynn said...

Wow, this is cool! I really enjoyed this.

S.E.Ingraham said...

Ah - as one who is steeped in crazy stained in lunacy, I think we may be kindred spirits ... this is a wonderful wild romp ... just ... crazy

http://aleapingelephant.blogspot.ca/2012/05/drinking-from-mania-cup.html

max said...

Awe. Such a fan.