We

image borrowed from bing

We

“And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks,

sermons in stones, and good in everything.”

--William Shakespeare

We 

are the wage-slave mortals who toil

with non-objective blinders 

strapped to our temples,

scurrying like reeling rabbits, 

as dismal as weed-worms, degenerating 

into pox-ridden weather-bitten ill-nurtured

creatures riddled with kidney stones, 

exerting our precious life’s blood 

for those dastardly dewberries, 

those abhorrent corporate coxcombs, 

those maltish monkeys in the corner offices,

finding ourselves sadly dependent 

on the humble wages they pay us, 

less than a turd’s third of our actual worth,

a pauper’s portion of the big pie, 

just 

a monthly fustilarian posterior penetration

with us on all fours howling like dogs,

forced to wear their varlot-bitch name tags,

our battered senses dulled by their chronic

sodomite insensitivity, bending low,

eyes cast down, back’s arched, 

genuflecting to the beasts,

kept in cubicles like cattle,

forced to submit to their ruttish behaviors;

we, 

the people, 

we, 

the work force,

we, 

of the 99%,

we 

who serve,

laboring sans sympathy

from the craven overseers, 

as if under-employment and out-sourcing 

was our manifest destiny,

we 

have been talking amongst ourselves,

preparing to build battlements,

if democracy continues to be folly,

if Presidents continue to be powerless,

if the future contains more failure,

more destruction of our dreams,

we

have made the plans,

and the word “revolution” will not fully describe

the day the sled dogs turn in their traces,

first eating the harnesses, then the whips,

then the masters.

Glenn Buttkus

July 2012

Posted over on Flipside Records
Posted also over on dVerse Poets-OLN55

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Meraki Mumbling

painting by maria zampedroni

Meraki Mumbling


"What can be explained is not poetry."
--W.B. Yeats

There I was lying holy

in a halcyon hotole, admiring

the cairn I had constructed while

in the natiful throes of chiplick bliss,

searching for the elusive astoe balance,

sketching the stersha stipes midst mastication

of their musky caps, fixated on the bristlecone

eyespot that contained whorls and tendums

a thousand bilanos deep, before rising

indantly to capture a red latostyr that

had fluttered innocently into the

cluster of bilino blossoms all

about me, for I would ever

be just a husky honist

laden with skytio

daydreams,

a perspou poet

infatuated with ireatio words,

that language that embraces softly

like Harlow’s silken robes, begging ever

so sweetly to become pupticious poetics

and I, of course, cannot deny

such genthic entreatments.

Glenn Buttkus

July 2012

Posted over on dVerse Poets

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Styx & Stones

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Styx & Stones

The old man grimaced from lower back pains

that stabbed like a squad of stilettos 

as he skipped a flat rock across the river

eight times, once for every decade

of his life;

eight rippled rings spreading out

from each other, wider and thinner

until they blended once more

with the moving surface of the water

and then quietly disappeared,

first the loud splash, impact, vibrance,

focus, identity, notoriety, and then

invisibility, down into the deep green

again.

He squatted by the riverbank

for a long time, hunting, until

his strong big-knuckled hands

found another perfectly flat stone.

Rising up too quickly, excitedly,

it took a moment for his eyes to clear,

his nostrils to stop flaring,

his breath to slow down so that

he could hump the harmony,

harvest the heart of the moment.

He tilted slightly to the right

and then snapped the stone

from his thick shoulder

low to the ground and out 

across the rushing water.

It hummed as it left his hand,

slicing the air effortlessly

before hitting the water and then 

hopped like a sandstone bug, 

skipping ten times in magnificent motion,

softly splashing yet barely touching

as it leaped across the rapids,

clear and precise, shining in the sun

for a moment before bouncing hard 

onto the startled bank on the other side.

The old man’s heart was skipping too,

ten times lightly, and his smile smothered

his grizzled chin as he stepped boldly

into his next decade.

Glenn Buttkus

July 2012

Posted over at dVerse Poets MTB

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The Shroom Deity

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The Shroom Deity

"Timothy Leary's dead.
He's outside looking in,
he'll fly his astral plane,

takes you tripping around the bay,
and brings you back the same day."

--Moody Blues.

In 1954 Aldous Huxley had himself

a mescaline experience, letting peyote buttons

swing open those doors of perception,

and hark the dandelions sang,

blood turned to apple jelly,

a straw dog jumped up and ran out of the room

barking in German, as the amateur drug culture

dawned like coral sun triplets.

In 1960 Timothy Leary traveled to Mexico

into the plexus of the sub-tropics in search

of psilocybin, soon finding those magic mushrooms

drenched in humidity, hiding midst interlocking

fairy rings as he crouched nose-deep in leaf litter

and dying tree roots, chewing the very palatable

caps off thick sticky stipes, watching squads of

earthstars splitting into majestic puffball star-shapes,

surmising that the oyster gods of fungus were guileless 

and gilled with black shoelace Asian beards

as he returned to Harvard to be fired

so that he could freely accept the throne

of Love Guru for the teeming hippie hordes.

Whereas I had suffered with monstrous migraine

cluster headaches forever, beyond recall, retreating

to shuttered dark rooms, crumpling into a limp lobster

pose with pillows over my head, until 2006,

when the United States government funded

a double-blind study for Johns Hopkins University,

looking at the spiritual aspects and effects of psilocybin,

and I was invited to participate.

38 minutes post-ingestion my perceptual accesses

swung wide open while listening to Miles Davis,

as the room filled with a thick rope of rainbows,

pulsating with brilliant colors that flashed perfectly

with the clarity of jazz notes, as the angelic halos

around our prayer candles hissed and popped

like sparklers, as the table tops and furniture

came alive and I could see them breathing,

rising and falling to the beat, as I floated

for a lifetime on blissful bosons until

the Higgs Messiah arrived stirring the calmness

with breezy beckoning with me joining

with the gregarious clusters of particles

that flocked frantically to it, creating

mass again, working our way leisurely 

back into the room.

My headaches are strangers now,

anxiety just a quaint memory,

God chants behind my pancreas,

death is but a transitory portal,

loving spirits dance in my hallways,

and incredible spiritual well being

rises in me daily as my inner sun. 

Glenn Buttkus

July 2012

Posted over on Shawna's site Flipside Records

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Etat Francais

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Etat Francais

Despite the ongoing love affair

most Americans have had

with France since the 1950’s, 

with Gene Kelly pirouetting across the Seine, 

with Jackie Gleason miming Gigot,

with Jacques Tati re-inventing physical comedy,

with Jerry Lewis becoming an icon, 

I have always been fascinated with the bloody blot

that the French carry on their twentieth century souls,

after the crack Nazi war machine had defeated

their ill-equipped provincial Army, during

that dark period from July 1940-August 1944,

when the Vichy Regime,

led by the 84 year old WWI hero,

Marshall Philippe Petain, created

a semi-fascist state patterned after

Franco’s fascista in Spain,

began to collaborate with the Bosche,

helping to round up Jews and other “undesirables”--

like teachers, poets, intellectuals, and homosexuals,

and sometimes used their puppet military forces

to fight and sabotage the Allies.

Sadly, ironically, the majority of the French people

supported, or tolerated Vichy rule in order

to maintain a degree of national autonomy. 

Historians favored Charles de Gaulle,

the highest ranking officer in the French Army

who officially resisted the surrender of his country,

who fled to England to create

“the French government in exile”;

but my poetic blood has always been stirred

by the guerrilla bands of resistance fighters,

the Free French movement, who fled

to the mountainous areas of Brittany and southern France,

to those dashing brave Basque-beret wearing warriors--

the Maquis,

who helped and hid downed Allied flyers

and runaway fleeing Jews,

who attacked the Germans within

every corner of their occupied country,

who were labeled “terrorists”

by the cowardly corp of Vichy authorities--

thankfully many of which were executed

for war crimes, collaboration, treason

and complicity during the Holocaust;

yet, as with the post-war Nazis on trial,

the majority of the Vichy treacheries,

injustices, cruelties, inhumanities,

and treasons were never fully paid for--

the Fascists became mist, just ghosts

hidden in plain sight, blending masterfully

back into the work pants of the proletariat,

just a shameful vermillion stain on 

the war-torn pages of French history;

but for some reason a throbbing part of me

cannot forget or forgive that cruel capitulation,

that terrible time of evil deeds

when most of France gave in

to their basest of natures.

Glenn Buttkus

July 2012

Posted over on dVerse Poets-Poetics

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Higgs

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Higgs

The Higgs mechanism is the Messiah

and particles are attracted

to its presence.

As it gathers mass,

it gains momentum.

Soon it is affected

by phonon and boson waves,

which spawn a solid,

or a lattice of crystalline structure

of positively charged atoms.

The more you read, 

it seems that

every answer creates

twenty questions.

Glenn Buttkus

July 2012

Posted over on G-Man Flash 55  

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Verse Has a Voice

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Verse Has a Voice

“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning

well, poetry is just the ash.”--Leonard Cohen

Poetry burrows its way into everything,

into song lyrics,

blues chords,

sax riffs,

dance moves,

garish graffiti on bare brick,

the guts of good prose,

the fabric of politics,

the swoon of sermons,

digital recordings sent by NASA,

thrust into the evermore, endeavoring

to communicate with what’s out there,

into the overlapping dimensional shifts

of my dreams and my several lives.

It definitely is

scatological

              sensual

                     pathos

                           bathos

                                  crocodile tears,

                                                 heartaches

                                     seminal joys

                              the seasons

                         birdsong

                      blood

                   tirades

                touch

        beat-downs

     defenses

injustices

liberty, freedom, heroic, macabre, absurd,

humorous, heartbreaking, bolstering, reconstruction

and nostalgic. 

                            

It

flies, crawls, stumbles, struts, leaps, somersaults,

races, stalls, skips, taps,

and gyrates its hips.

Often it can

exhilarate, depress, uplift, confuse, illuminate,

stimulate, explicate, dampen, perplex

or justify.

It is capable of screaming, whispering, lecturing,

cajoling, alienating, hugging, bitch-slapping, raping,

making love, assaulting, cuddling, defining, strangling

or holding at arm’s length,

but thank the gods it also

french kisses, shrimps, gets on top, crosses its arms,

unsnaps its bra and shows its breasts, flashes

its butt, performs in every imaginable position,

and wraps its long legs passionately

around our muscular backs.

I find it to be

my constant companion,

my counselor, 

my guide,

my matron,

my lover,

my voice,

and sometimes I fear

it is hermaphroditic,

both

my master

and my mistress.

Glenn Buttkus

July 2012.

Posted over at dVerse Poets

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Sumner

image by glenn buttkus

Sumner

Twenty years ago when I lived nearby,

I used to drive through it, marveling

at the well kept yards, the casual

and open smiles, the well entrenched

block watch,

and the comfortable insinuation

that the sheriff was named Andy,

that Gomer worked at the last real gas station,

that Ozzie and Harriet’s former home

was like a shrine to some,

that David and Ricky attended

the mostly all-white high school,

that Donna Reed lived there for a time,

that Robert Young once owned a lot there,

that the newish strip malls were necessary

but slow in developing, and had to earn trust,

that most older couples walked hand in hand,

that even if someone had moved into the midst

of the languid living nostalgia and had resided

there for decades, they would remain

the new folks.

So I was resigned to nodding at my

third generation neighbors who

had grown up there, barbecuing in back yards

with their children and grandchildren,

none of which had ever left or wanted to leave

this garden spot in the valley, hemmed in

by foothills and two rivers, criss-crossed

with train tracks,

and on Sunday mornings when the ten churches 

let their great bells compete, even the long

freights and sleek passenger trains

would give a blast on their raucous air horns

to compliment the spirit of that reoccurring 

Norman Rockwell moment, and

I would sit on my covered redwood deck

sipping tea, playing pinochle with my wife,

saluting Mt. Rainier as the daylight slid down

its glaciers, waiting expectantly for

my pregnant middle daughter to show up

with granddaughter in tow after services

to continue with the garage sale she was

holding in our yard, creating cash for

care of the grandson soon to join us,

right there in the sweet suburbs

with the big city twinkling on the horizon

I realized that the American Dream

was as alive as you wanted it to be,

as you let it be. 

Glenn Buttkus

July 2012

Posted over at Magpie Tales 125

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Sense

"tornados in California-2010"

image borrowed from bing

Sense

What the hell makes sense?

The Bush Wars inherited by Obama?

Gas costing $1.25 per litre across Canada?

Cajun poutine without hot sauce?

Old age? Adolescent angst?

Intermittent attacks of Can’t Remember Shit,

body parts wearing out?

Who will be elected the next president

after telling lies, making unfulfillable promises,

and then being tossed back into the cauldron 

of arachnid archaic asinine politics?

Labeling things jumbo shrimp

or government intelligence?

Training thousands of dogs to fight war

and then giving them the status of “equipment”?

Continuing to be engaged by rhetorical inquiries?

Trying to understand why most GPS units send you

in stupid directions, to the wrong places, convincing

you that you have forgotten how to read a map?

Jean-Paul Sartre, Herman Cain, Ronald McDonald?

Jackson Pollack’s frenetic drippings?

Klee’s linear universe?

Mozart’s operas? My cat? The neighbor’s dog?

My wife, your wife, our children?

Rev. Mel Lewis holding a White Christian’s Conference

in Alabama? The Vatican excommunicating anybody?

Why Motel 6 rooms cost $85.00 per night?

Why I couldn’t find an SUV I liked that was painted red

instead of government mint silver?

Why millions of rational people live without fear

in the shadow of several fire mountains in Washington State?

Meg Ryan turning down the lead in PRETTY WOMAN?

Trying to decide whether to whistle or have sex in cemeteries?

Why there have been six AMERICAN PIE movies?

Why no one seems to give a shit that I saw a UFO up close

on the high CA desert in 1983?

Why smart phones mostly are dumber than a stump,

with modern technology sprouting like fly larva daily

encouraging us to become more dependent on it

than anyone could have dreamed of a decade ago,

creating cosmic impatience with any wait beyond five seconds,

fanning creativity in some and instant boredom without

constant stimulation in others?

Sure, I could go on and on and on,

but what would be the sense in that?

Glenn Buttkus

July 2012

Posted over on dVerse Poets-MTB

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