Thursday, November 29, 2012

Chigurh



image borrowed from bing


Chigurh

“There is no God, and we are his prophets.”
--Cormac McCarthy

first thing, carefully
across the depression, he swung
out into the dust.

he rose,
smelled them,
put them back,
left the bed,

walked over,
opened the doors,
closed them again,

went around the sink,
ran his finger down
along the seam
of the tub;

a bloody towel,
bloodstained washcloth,
bloody handprints
on
the shower curtain.

at first light,
making notes in his head,
could still see the bloodstains
where Moss
had been shot,

bits of glass in the gutter,
window glass
from curbside automobiles,
some windows shot out,
pocks in the brickwork,
teardrop smears on the steps.

sun was coming up,
two bulletholes in the door,
he went in;

faint smell of rot.
a parlor, an old woman
sat slumped, shot
through the forehead,
newspaper in her lap,
cotton robe black
with dried blood.

You could not help
but notice.


Glenn Buttkus

November 2012

This Erasure Poem was taken from a page of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
by Cormac McCarthy

Posted over on dVerse Poets MTB

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Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Peace in our Time



image borrowed from bing


Peace in our Time

“If we have no peace, it is because we have
forgotten that we belong to each other.”
--Mother Teresa


I just read some good news,
which does not appear daily.

Last Monday in NYC
between
10:30 pm 
& 11:30 am,

there were no
shootings,
stabbings,
slashings,
beheadings
or murders.

Of course one teenager
did accidently shoot himself
in the thigh. 

Police can’t remember
the last time this happened.

Wonder how Detroit
did that day?


Glenn Buttkus

November 2012

Posted over on G-Man's Flash 55

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Sunday, November 25, 2012

Existere



image borrowed from myself


Existere

“Beauty is eternity gazing at itself
in the mirror--but remember you are
eternity and you are the mirror.”
--Kahil Gibran

We all face mirrors incessantly
and accept reflections in glass
and loved one’s perceptions
as evidence of our existence.

We justify what we see, what we hear,
esthetically and artistically, as
the pertinent interplay between soul,
our actual dyad participant, and husk,
that often pitiful package that finds itself
harboring a significant absence 
of youthful vigor & glow;

discovering
that deranged imp on our right shoulder
cajoling us toward restoration, reclamation,
emotional mood uplifters as the triads of
doubt, shame, and anger resurface,
dragging fragmented memories of
beauty, popularity, and acceptance
behind them like tin cans on their tails,

as surging squadrons of ego-dystonic thoughts
regarding the facing of plastic surgeon’s scalpels,
traumatic fat-removal surgeries, miracle drinks
as seen on TV at 3 a.m., or those mysterious
black weight loss pills bought in Chinatown
that smell a lot like creosote, plague us.

Come on, worshipping beauty is a practice
as ancient as breath itself, and it propels us
into an anomie that we need to avoid.

Once we can ascertain that we are no longer,
or perhaps have never been beautiful,
it is illogical, imprudent to embark willingly
on the auto-destruction of our common sense;

We need to simply acknowledge the calm passenger
on our left shoulder, who is more than willing
to immerse us in its symposium without sorrow,
where we are lovingly reminded that Age can be,
should be, revered, starting with ourselves;

reminded also that we were wise enough
during the second blooming to nurture
insightful confidence as to who
we actually are,

that both autumn and winter can/will
inhabit the totality of our sphere,
that dreaded withering is
more epidermal than spiritual,
that the gorgeous child within,
still evident in the depth of our eyes,
never ages,
never tires,
never abandons us. 


Glenn Buttkus

November 2012

Posted over at dVerse Poets OLN

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Saturday, November 24, 2012

Resolutions



painting by curtis verdun


Resolutions

“If you want to hear God laugh,
make a plan.”

Every single time I buy a scratch ticket
I prepare myself for winning a fortune,
but after forty years of shoving bucks
into the black hole of Lotto, I remain
the upper lower class blue-collar
poster boy. 

Where in hell are those helpful, functional, 
practical manuals for being a good
parent, spouse, friend, mensch?
They don’t seem to be on the self-help,
home improvement, or mental health aisles;

rather we are just dropped 
into the deep end
to thrash about madly,
to sink or swim,
to float or flounder,
to maintain or implode
completely on our own.

There are those among us who are bolstered
by the notion that while spiritual entities
we fully prepare for each upcoming lifetime,
factoring in lessons still to be learned,
large complicated karmic groups,
several transitionary possibilities,
every calamity, triumph and malady,

yet as we relearn old knowledge, still
we all experience those bleak moments
when we feel so alone that to be designated
pariah would be a positive improvement.

How about our New Year’s resolutions--
when we make ironclad promises to ourselves
to lose a washtub of blubber,
to better manage that anger,
to cultivate more patience with others,
to get back to meditating,
to hug, care, and love more,

but as the decades pile up like junk
in the basement we still find ourselves
sitting on that couch munching maple bars
while watching hours of trash TV,
completely ignoring ten kinds of guilt,
common sense, logic, and various
forms of advice given by family & friends,
just shouting, “Fuck it!”.
I work too hard for too little cash,
my vote could not possibly count for much,
my opinions are too insightful & controversial,

so get off my ass and just let me be
the sole architect of my own destruction,
plugged in, buttoned down,
peddle to the metal,
out of control,
                volatile,
                     arrogant,
                 selfish,
            divisive,
and absolutely 
free
falling
into a dark well,
a hidden bomb shelter,
a precarious pitfall,
a quixotic quagmire,

and wherever I end up,
whatever my final destination,
I will know most of those
who preceded me.


Glenn Buttkus

November 2012

Posted over on dVerse Poets

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Friday, November 23, 2012

Betrothal



image borrowed from facebook


Betrothal

“Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion
of time, effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of
an end.”--Germaine De Stael

The kids and grandchildren showed up
Happy to gather before noon, just
Eager to visit, to cook, to hug, to
Palaver about politics, sports, the weather;

Remembering holidays past, discussing the meats
Of a different ilk, just for fun, iguana, tarantula, ostrich,
Porcupine, python, but then finally settling in

Over a perfect golden brown turkey, going around the table
Speaking about what each of us was thankful for
As Andrea’s boyfriend went romantically to one knee,
Laughed at her surprise, and then proposed to her.

[He went to Jared, and she said yes in front of the family.]

Glenn Buttkus

Thanksgiving 2012


Posted over on dVerse Poets FFA

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Monday, November 19, 2012

Club Indigo



image borrowed from bing


Club Indigo

Hipness isn’t a state of mind,
it’s a fact of life.”--Cannonball Adderley

The Club was smoky-dark, 
layered with Lucky Strikes, 
Havana cigars
and a teasing whiff of cannabis, 

like stepping lively out of a time capsule
into 1940’s Harlem, those sexy ladies
in low-cut dresses down front, their
pushed up breasts lovely pink whorls
bulging up from rough-purple brocade bodices,
their smiling shallow eyes seemingly deep-set
behind mascara and golden glitter,
several vintage steam radiators popping
and snapping like hot fingers to the jazzy beat;

the tall chanteuse stood beanpole upright,
all light-skinned honey brown inside her
tight black dress, a deep purple osteopermum
clipped jauntily into her long corn-rowed locks,
her blood red lips moist from sensual warbling;

the music developing into West African rhythms,
all hand-beaten drums, deep alto saxing
and shrill frightening licorice stick--with
a fat bear in a green fedora at the piano,
chipping away at the boss brass lead.

I sat there alone at a back table,
open-collared behind red Ray-Bans,
sucking hard on a complimentary mint
to counterpoint the smoker’s pungent mist,
feeling a bit like a potato gnocchi floating
in a pan of chocolate froth, like a white
daisy in a field of dark daffodils,

yet deliciously doused in several flavors
of indeterminate joy as it became prolific,
tripling, going viral just as the torch singer
hit the high notes, the horn's bleating meshed,
the drummer slammed the snare, and
the piano player plinked the atonal keys,
leaving me weeping as tears of gratitude
appeared from behind tinted lenses,
thankful for my jumping jazz allotment,
safe there in the beautiful darkness
tapping the last note with my forefinger
as love honey-dripped over us                                  
and racism exited the building.


Glenn Buttkus

November 2012

Posted over on dVerse Poets OLN

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Saturday, November 17, 2012

Capture



image by terry s. amstutz, aka moibus faith


Capture

“There are always two people in
every picture: the photographer
and the viewer.”--Ansel Adams

We do cherish our own filter on the world,
trusting it to
alert, cajole, tantalize, tease
and amaze us--

and we certainly deepen our relationship
with our personal perceptions when we
voraciously snap images of chosen portions
of our immediate environment,

passionately prowling
abandoned buildings, alleys, under bridges,
through barbed wire and peek holes
in steel fencing,

finding sweet nostalgia and insight within
the decay, the broken backs of equipment,
the bent corrugated rows on metal walls,
twisted latches, locks, and door handles,
the discarded pieces of clothing,
overcoats, sweaters, pants, underwear, hats,
the molding magazines, 
their pages stuck together,
the torn shards of newspapers,
incomplete headlines dangling,
the single boots,
laces shredded and tongues agape,
the stiff lost gloves,
the ends of the fingers missing,
the solitary feathers
dropped from urban wings,
the crushed cigarette packages,
tiny particles of tobacco still laughing,
the used condoms,
sexual balloons burst by rats,
the broken glass,
piles of leaded colorful beads,
and everywhere the powerful patina
clinging like rusty lichen to every kind of metal,
sparkling with delicious decorative oxidation;

but often even more striking
is the street art, that garish graffiti
that blossoms on the city’s epidermis
of naked brick, box car sides,
the concrete bellies of bridges,
dumpsters, call boxes, phone poles
and abandoned vehicles,

providing us with both the “Neuve Art”
and the vitality of a vocabulary lesson
as fucktard, twatwaffle, assclown, & fuckwit
are added to our arsenal of street speak;

allowing some of us to share the glories
of natural visual geometry and living history
as we gleefully continue our search
for honesty within squalor,
for truth within abandonment,
and for liberty within egress.


Glenn Buttkus

November 2012

Posted over on dVerse Poets

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Friday, November 16, 2012

Bessie's Bones



image borrowed from google


Bessie’s Bones

Hurricane Sandy
was a behemoth bitch
that mated
with an Arctic brute
and broke the back
of a dozen states,
yet--

it also exposed
the Bessie White,
a 90 year old
four-masted schooner

on a beach
on Fire Island,
between Skunk Hollow
and Whalehouse Point.

Look fast,
for the sea
shall rebury it
soon. 

Glenn Buttkus

November 2012

Posted over on G-Man's Flash 55

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Thursday, November 15, 2012

The Last Wordbender




image borrowed from Bing


The Last Wordbender

“God changes his appearance every second.
Blessed be the man who can recognize him
in all his disguises.”  --Alexis Zorba

It was 1952.
I was in third grade, living in a Navy project
deep in the cut between Magnolia and Queen Anne,
saddled with a reoccurring nightmare about
two black leopards stalking me in the schoolyard,
alone, at night, on a swing.

Elizabeth II was proclaimed Queen.
Love that Terrence Davies quote,
“It now was the Betty Windsor Show, 
Betty & Phil and their gilded carriage of flunkies.”
--glad to still be here for the old gal’s 
Golden Jubilee, where she had a stand in
leap from a helicopter with Daniel Craig,
paragliding into the jammed stadium.

Nikos Kazantzakis released ZORBA the GREEK,
but I did not read it then, too busy reading
Howard Fast, Jack London, & John Steinbeck
to notice:

“On a deaf man’s door, you can knock forever.”

Thousands in Washington, D.C. witnessed a buzzing
from several UFO’s as I sat watching 
THE ATOMIC CITY with Gene Barry, being prepared
for the onslaught of nuclear Fear in the 50’s,
and for the communist witch hunts
as Charlie Chaplin took an ocean liner to London
for his world premiere of LIMELIGHT,
and while in transit, J. Edgar Hoover
revoked his reentry permit to America.

“All right, we will go outside where God
can see us better.”

Flashing forward past pimples, wet dreams, loss
of my virginity, drag races, my discovery
of Walt Whitman and free verse
to 1964, when I was 20, starting
college after trying to make my way without
an education, having my mind altered daily
after rejoicing that THE WIZARD OF OZ
had resumed its annual telecast, having
missed 1963 post-JFK assassination,
as LBJ signed into law the
“Civil Rights Act of 1964”,
Sidney Poitier became the first black man
to receive an Oscar just as Nelson Mandela
was sentenced to life imprisonment in South Africa,
and doing my part I began to date black girls
in college while really grooving on a new 
British rock group called The Beatles 
and Beatlemania burst into our lives.

“How can I not love them? Poor weak creatures,
taking so little, a man’s hand on their breast--
and they give you all they got.”

Taking a college cheerleader to see the opening
of ZORBA THE GREEK at a U District art house
and she thought it was stupid and hedonistic:

“God has a big heart, but there is one sin he will not
forgive. If a woman calls a man to her bed and he will
not go.”

The cheerleader never did call, but others did,
many others, as I interrupted my schooling
for service to my country, returning with 
an artist’s fire in my loins, with dreams
of a career in theater, in films, possibly
becoming a playwright, a novelist, and always
remaining the poet,

“Life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive
is to undo your belt and look for trouble.”

For in ’64, the Year of Zorba,
we heard that our military advisors
in South Viet Nam were running into heavy resistance
as I graduated “first in my class” from community college
and beat to the Big Town to see
both the Elephant and FROM RUSSIA,
WITH LOVE, #2 in what would become
a 50 year film series; most of us have seen
them all and could name all six actors who played Bond;

Connery, Lazenby, Dalton, Moore, Brosnan,
and today’s 007, that chiseled rock, Daniel Craig,
but how many remember Barry Nelson,
David Niven, Peter Sellers, & Woody Allen?

“You think too much, that is your trouble.
Clever people and grocers, they weigh everything.”

During the last decade, after suffering through
The Bush Dynasty, the New Crusades,
and White House mini-rodeos in the Rose Garden,
when despair slept with me incessantly
like a dark vindictive slut, I would hear--

“When everything goes wrong, what a joy it is
to test your soul, and see if it has endurance & courage.”

In my life, Alexis Zorba has forever been pathfinder,
muse, teacher, drinking companion, fellow carouser,
compadre, surrogate father, day-warrior & jester--
always at the ready to appear, or reappear
when I needed him as I enjoy my own journey
through the maze of this incarnation;

working for more than 50 years, half a damned 
century, I finally was allowed to fold up the dress slacks,
hang up the garish neckties and button-down shirts,
to now live in Levis, to luxuriate in four-day beard growths,
and let my vehicle often sit idle several days a week.

“When seeing that my body is merely sickness and crime,
age and death, shall I--free, fearless, and blissful--shall I
retire to the forest in solitude, without companions or joy?”

(Smile) Hell, no;
my bucket list is way too lengthy,
my interests are infinite,
my networking is global,
my writing is developing muscles
I could never even have dreamed of
while still in harness.

Glenn Buttkus

November 2012

Posted over on dVerse Poets MTB

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