Saturday, September 14, 2013

Burma Shave Bequests



image borrowed from bing


Burma Shave Bequests

“All media exist to invest our lives with
artificial perceptions & arbitrary values.”
--Marshall McLuhan

Robert Frost don’t know a thing about me
or my roads--but certainly he did understand
your spirit & your heart, as poets must,
as they wander too often lost, taking
notes during the chaos, joys, wars,
tragedies & celebrations. 

A man recently while walking a beach on
Vancouver Island, found a 106 year old bottle
with a paper message inside, and he refused
to open it--knowing that when today’s air
touches 1906 paper, something tragic could
occur, as words might fade, & the writer
could lose the spider’s thread tether to this world. 

Miss New York was overheard saying that the present
Miss America was “fat as fuck”--allowing some of the
vitriol & ugliness to mushroom up through the mystery
of almost perfect bodies packaging imperfect minds,
exposing both the best & worst of our dreams,

simultaneously as New CMA star Casey Musgraves revealed
that she was still resentful (smile) about losing the Miss
Tater-Tot beauty pageant when she was ten years old--
reinforcing the rancor one feels about the arbitrary course
of success, watching a performer under 30 tasting of
Luck while it is still fresh & steaming, fearing 
that it may go cold before she can wholly consume it,
or it consumes her. 

What if God were one of us, just a slob like one of us?--
question many in lesson, still ignorant about the facts,
not realizing that He/She/it has always been present
within our personal viscera, invisible but extant,
smaller than a nano-virus yet bigger than a cosmos,
while transcending & disdaining those who strive
to transform it to rules of order within the countless
factions of religious realm. 

How you murdered your family means nothing to me
as your mouth moves across my body--because
inevitably eros trumps empathy, orgasm drowns
rationale, breasts are better than burdens, 
and certainly your silken legs wrapped around
my butt like a tender vise, momentarily blinds
me to politics, godheads, jehadists, insults,
massacres, migraines, & dust mites,

because the temporal reality of intense coitus,
while we are functioning together as one entity,
passionately reconnects us to genesis,
and provides a beautiful blindness
to every sort of shit storm. 

There’s a crow flying, black & ragged, tree to tree,
& now he is diving down to pick up something shiny--
perhaps a new element covered in extraterrestrial symbols,
perhaps a piece of chrome off a Corvette,
perhaps an inner gum wrapper wadded into a ball,
perhaps that message from the bottle
as it oxidizes, slaying the message,
banishing the messenger. 


Glenn Buttkus

September 2013

Posted over on dVerse Poets Poetics

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

18 comments:

Mystic_Mom said...

Bows to your mastery - Glenn you totally and utterly rocked this beyond my wildest expectations! :-D

Anonymous said...

Glen, WoW! All that from Burma Shave. Somehow I wasn't surprised to see that graphic from you, but the piece totally blew me away. It has so much in it going on around, up and down and sideways but hold together like a glued together Rubric's cube.>KB

Brian Miller said...

ha i mean if i missed out ont he miss tater tot pageant i would be pissed as well...ha. nice stanza on god as well playing on that song lyric...and eros trumping empathy...dang..wish i'd written that one...smiles.

Claudia said...

how cool to find a bottle message after such a long time...i probably couldn't have resisted to open it.... cool that you loop back to it in the close as well with the crow..

Anonymous said...

Another gem from your pen...or keyboard. Thanks.

brudberg said...

Really Glen this was your prompt... so many fun snippets.. I should read newspapers more.. loved the old bottle.

Grace said...

Wow a feast tonight Glenn ~ You packed this with such beauty & ugliness of our soul ~

Anonymous said...

loved this from beginning to end- and what an ending! the last lines - perfection - K

Unknown said...

He/She/it has always been present
within our personal viscera, invisible but extant,
smaller than a nano-virus yet bigger than a cosmos,
while transcending & disdaining those who strive
to transform it to rules of order within the countless
factions of religious realm

It was all good but this struck me most. It felt like your poem was also vast, containing multitudes.

hyperCRYPTICal said...

Wow Glenn - this is your bestest everest! The ending (as all) is Perfect!

Anna :o]

Victoria said...

This is so very astute, Glenn. Well-written as though we were having a discussion about current events, the past and what really counts in the future. I have to wonder how long it takes you to create this type of discourse..and where the ideas come from. One of the advantages of living a while, eh?

Mary said...

Really loved all the philosophy in this. You're right on with your observations...Loved your theory of God, for example, just for a start.

Wyeth Bailey said...

I'd really love to hear you read that aloud, in as few breaths as possible, in a loud or very low gruff voice. I just love it.

Anonymous said...

Hi Glenn - this a new favorite of yours - your jumps from point to point are very well done, from the sublime to the Miss Tater Tot - you work like the crow catching the shine and passing it on. k.

seasideauthor said...

All encompassing write you have here. I had forgotten about the cube. But, do not remember Burma Shave, 'musta been a guy thing'.
Well done.

Anonymous said...

Very cool and classy indeed. I read it out loud to myself - several times over. It's one for the stage, definitely.

Maude Lynn said...

" breasts are better than burdens,
and certainly your silken legs wrapped around
my butt like a tender vise, momentarily blinds
me to politics, godheads, jehadists, insults,
massacres, migraines, & dust mites"

Just freaking brilliant.

David Gilmour said...

There are some good passages in your poetry lately--The Burma Shave moves through a good bit of cultural and social shit. Jesus Shaves! God the father gave it up during his hoboing days.
Keep working on the social/cultural narrative in your poetry, moving out from the personal narcissism of poet contemplating soul or navel. Poetry has gone inward too much, as though the world is too frightening out there, too big to get the hang of. Did you ever see Howl with James Franco. Oh to write a poem that offends the world! --David