Thursday, February 28, 2013

Day 59



image borrowed from bing


Day 59

“Do onto others twenty-five percent better than
you expect them to do onto you.”
--Linus Pauling    Born February 28, 1901


The last gasp of February is in a dogtrot,
heard Dale Robertson died over on CNN;
somebody got busy picking out his grass-plot.

Pope Benedict XVI will today begin
life as pope emeritus, not soon forgot,
just plain priest Joe Ratzinger once again.

ATF thugs attacked Branch Davidians with buckshot
because devil-dog Koresh was hiding within;
slaying with fire--other solutions not sought.

Remembering our Nisqually Earthquake without chagrin,
thankful we eluded the lethal shaking slip-knot
that hit Iran, killing 3,000 that day therein.

Dupont in ’35 discovered nylon, creating a sexpot
society, making curvy calves so very hot.


Glenn Buttkus

February 28, 2013

Posted over on dVerse Poets FFA  

This is a variation on the Sonnet, 4 tercets followed by a couplet.
Would you like to hear the author read this poem to you?

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Horizontal Bopping



image borrowed from bing


Horizontal Bopping

“Each of us can manifest the properties of a
field of consciousness that transcends space,
time, and linear causality.”--Stanislav Grof

Life is linear,
with inception as crowned vanguard,
& deterioration as

destination, creating a
vibrant colorful mosaic, a throbbing
kaleidoscope, a series 

of devious gilded
dust bunnies, kenneled in brass
pots, tucked under

beds, stacked in 
teetering tall piles in the
corner, hidden in

closets, sequestered in
broken shoe boxes, saved in
forgotten family albums,

treasured within folds
of red velvet, gift-wrapped tightly
in tissue paper.

***********************

Death is the
impudent speck of counterpoint, egress
as extinguishment, our

imminent arrival at
Critical Mass, having traveled inexorably
from birth of

a planet to
the death of a star;
the magical transition

another face, a
different roof, a parallel dimensional
 and domicidal shift 

with different doorways 
for each of us, windowless,
wiped of numerals.

*****************************

Death as lover
lies with mold on bread crust,
with the fish

on dirty ice,
with bloody steaks piled up
neatly in shrink--

wrapped pinkish lines,
with the flowers cut and
ready to wither,

with the polished
color-injected fruit placed perfectly
in supermarket bins;

everything waiting for
the passionate embrace of many
mouths, mighty molars

reducing it to
grist, paste, & slivers before
rot robs its

beauty, rendering it
sustenance for carrion, for pets,
whose alimentary components

are impervious to
the several varieties of carcinogens
deep within it;

harbored, hidden, but
obviously still a beast at
bay, restrained, tethered,

muzzled, yet never
eradicated, excommunicated, banished, forsaken, broken
beyond its voracity. 


Glenn Buttkus

February 2013

Posted over on dVerse Poets OLN

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Sunday, February 24, 2013

Gloaming Gustari




image borrowed from bing


Gloaming Gustari

The early morning has gold in its mouth.”
--Benjamin Franklin

For several years I rose bleary-eyed
and resolute to the eerie sounds
of soft silence being pierced by 
night birds squawking, flying
wing to wing with the bats,
and the lonesome barking of dogs;

struggling into the pre-twilight, wrapped
in striped muffler and navy-blue watch-cap,
having to wipe the steam from my spectacles
before hearing the evening’s freeze crackle
as I forced my car door open, the sonorous
screech of a blood-red ice scraper clearing
the windshield, the blinded rear-view mirrors,
and the driver’s window;

serenaded by classical music while shivering
in wait for the engine to percolate the radiator tea
and add purpose to the whoosh of defroster
on a windshield trying to re-form its icy mask;

sliding into gear, headlights on bright, breaking
the myriad of frozen sheets on puddles, emerging
at the head of the alley to make my familiar way
down quiet frosted streets, past dark houses
and slumbering occupants, out onto the wide
nearly empty stretch of freeway, allowing
me to drive faster, deep into the icy arms
of thick brown fog, past the district fenced lot
full of pencil-yellow school buses;

soon arriving at work, hiking 
from the empty parking stalls
across a wide stretch of tall firs 
throwing patchwork shadows 
for me to scurry through, 
past several buildings 
pale white from a harvest moon, 
it’s silver beams dancing on my breath
as I unlocked a side door and let myself
into a dimly-lit long hallway leading to
my office, where my government computer
hummed good morning, ready for
my exploration,
my excursions on line, 
my research, 
my poetry, 

spending several delicious hours 
before other employees
arrived at their duty stations, 
before sweet old blinded veterans 
would gather at my door needing 
my expertise, attention,
and compassion;

later even while mired in teaching, deep
in some technical explication, still
I savored the cached residue of joy
that remained within, the result
of being up before the dawn,

sailing like a solitary sailor 
on a sargasso cyber-sea
smiling leeward just before 
the new sun poked its fiery pate
above the awaiting fecund horizon-
greeting it boldly, more
than prepared for the

carpe diem,
quam minimum credula postero.


Glenn Buttkus

February 2013


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Thursday, February 21, 2013

Graffiato



street art by Banksy


Graffiato

“Art begins with resistance--at the point
where resistance is overcome.”--Andre Gide


For a good time call Kathy at FU2-666, 
scratched with a pocket knife while someone 
was taking a crap in a latrine stall 
in the bus station in 1958,

mixed in with copious pornographic cryptic messages
and crude drawings of sexual organs,
I love to suck dick & 
I take it up the ass;

this was my introduction to graffiti 
as my 12 year old hormones began
to rage & my mind reeled.

Graff has been with us since the cave glyphs.
They have found figure drawings & inscriptions
on Turkish temples, synagogues, ancient sepulchers,
on tombs, ruins, in the Catacombs of Rome,
and magma-scorched onto the stones of Pompeii;

disappointed lovers scribbling,
“I want to break Venus’s ribs with a club
and deform her hips.”--
a huge phallus with accompanying words,
“Mansueta Tene”--handle with care,

the young Michelangelo and Raphael were taggers,
painting their names with others in the ruins
of Nero’s Domus Aurea;

heart shapes and handprints connotated 
the proximity of a brothel,
Love For Sale.

The Mayans & Aztecs did it.
The Vikings did it.
The Crusaders did it.
The Mongol hordes did it.
American soldiers did it
on foreign city walls
and on the sides of their bombers,
tanks, and jeeps.

Street Art has developed rapidly
as a complex art form, whose validity
or value is contested highly & reviled by many,
while being appreciated, respected, 
& cherished by others.

Too often it is done without permission,
done hurriedly, breaking the law, done
defiantly, brazenly on buildings, in alleys,
on railroad box cars, subways,
& under bridges,

moving from scatological roots
to declarations of love, of territory,
political slogans, famous literary quotes,
various forms of protestation, 
sometimes with DC & Marvel comic book
or Hollywood movie themes,
“Dick Nixon before he dicks you.”

The new artists have monikers like
Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, Zephr,
Blek Le Rat, & Mr. Brainwash,
using spray paint cans & marking pens
to perform the Pissing of pigment,
done with refillable fire extinguishers,
Throw Ups and Bombing
where garish images are painted quickly,
Rolling or Blockbusters
as huge paintings prevent other artists
from sharing the space,
and the complex Wildstyling,
where letters & images interlock;
and of course Stenciling,
like the popular Banksy art.

Personally I prefer the work done lovingly,
with the permission of the property owner,
vast beautiful murals that fully manage
to enhance the quality of our lives;

let’s have less besmirching, belittling, bullying,
braggadocio, degrading or impugning;
for God’s sake let us celebrate life,
not glorify chaos or violence. 


Glenn Buttkus

February 2013 

Posted over on dVerse Poets MTB

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Sunday, February 17, 2013

Nymph



image borrowed from bing


Nymph 

“One should lie empty, open, choice-less as a beach--
waiting for a gift from the sea.” --Anne Morrow Lindbergh

His most cherished
moment, after banishment from fog,
bathed in golden

afternoon sunshine was
watching her strolling along the
neck of that

black beach, still
slick with the wondrous wetness
of outgoing tide;

silhouetted tiny against
the girth of the nearest
largest sea stack,

at the base
of a tall rock, where
a lone fisherman

stood like a
cardboard cut-out, grasping his
big saltwater pole,

with the sunlight
dancing around him on waves,
rippled by wind.

She stood poised,
as she considered dashing between
the receding waters,

and then decided
against it, quicksilver frozen in
a blue tableau,

perched like a
white heron stilted on driftwood logs,
before taking flight,

as he finally
understood her love for the
sea, the forces

that pulled her
from the city regularly, letting
her run free

on ocean beaches,
wandering, meditating, wading, waiting to
salute the sunset.


Glenn Buttkus

February 2013.

This Collum Lune posted over on dVerse Poets OLN

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Saturday, February 16, 2013

The Stacks


image by navin sarma


The Stacks

“I’ve always considered myself a minor writer.
My province is small, but I try to explore it
very, very thoroughly.”--Leonard Cohen

Thick fog clung like a cobweb
to that narrow couple of miles of coast
near Kalaloch, as we enjoyed a sunny
snippet of Indian summer, carrying
our picnic in a pink cooler out onto
a grassy bluff above the beach, tossing
a red tartan blanket over the lone park table,
trying to explain to our girls how a grove
of misshapen tree giants formed their burls.

Munching our apple & pineapple slices,
turkey sandwiches & sugar cookies,
we sat transfixed in soft silence,
drawn to the sibilance of the big surf,
never tiring of the eternal drama of waves
swelling, cresting, and pounding onto a beach
where sea salt, and broken colorful shells
were sprinkled on the gray-brown sand
like wild seasoning;

adorned with bleached Picasso-like twisted piles
of driftwood snakes, dragons, and ships of war,
bound up by fat shiny kelp whips, bent
around each other like Holocaust victims
in their killing pits, pausing patiently for 
varying degrees of petrification, gleefully awaiting
our pliant fingers to pluck some of them up,
rub them clean, and transport them inland
to reside within the sweetness of our garden.

A few short miles up the shore it seemed
that nothing could have prepared me for
the raw exhilaration of my first glimpse
of Ruby Beach, its steep trail dark with mud,
dropping like a sleeping lizard down through
a thick fringe of forest, the path continuing
past massive mausoleums & headstones of wood,
transitioning from large gravel to pea gravel
to a long naked stretch of slick black sand,
girdled with tall granite cliffs, that had wide jagged
crevices slashed deep within them, making
their edges resemble raised stone hands
with their fat ferrous fingers extending to heaven;
with seal caves and eel bore-holes carved
by the sea at their mossy bases;

all magnificent & mesmerizing, 
yet paled to nothing
when compared to the huge rock fists
that were the sea stacks, thrusting up
out of the soaked sand like biblical towers,
dotted with crewcut sea grass and short
hardy trees that were wind-bent
like old beach dwarves, and covered
with clouds of nesting gulls & terns;

magical monoliths standing alone off shore,
in ragged Neptunian squads up and down
the coast, survivors, as the fury of the ocean
had clawed at the cliffs for eons, and the stacks
just refused to go down, to erode, to bend a knee;

and one cannot ever gaze upon them without
being cheered by their defiance, 
being respectful of their heroics,
being awed by their beauty,

and transferring some of their tenacity
to the core of tensions brought
to that beach, and then left there
to deteriorate and blow back out
over busy waves.

Glenn Buttkus

February 2013

Posted over at dVerse Poets-Poetics

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Thursday, February 14, 2013

Vitriolic Valentine


image borrowed from bing


Vitriolic Valentine

“We are each of us angels with only one wing,
and we can only fly by embracing one another.”
--Lucretius

I rose up rambunctious this morning,
raging & ranting against the machine,
cranky as a bruin with boils, wanting,
demanding answers, closure, results,
pernicious pounds of flesh,
positive pieces of mind, succor
or at least some modicum of
verisimilitude.

Tell me why
does the wind whine like a whimsical
weather-bitch in Wimbledon while
professionals are attempting
to tend to serious tennis?

Will we as a species ever
experience global peace?
Because nobody negates
the numbing notion that all nations
need a nicer way to wage war;
for human nature is just too
naturally bellicose to embrace it.

Let me tell you, as a member
of the morbidly obese, if
one weighs two tons, and just
cannot surmount or control hunger,
it’s like riding a Brahma bull hand’s free--
so damn it, what dip-shit doesn’t dent decorum
while fasting off the fat?

My neighbor’s garage rafters are riddled
with rabid rats, while only slim yards away,
as our Keezie cat stands vigil, we do hope
our gentle garage will never become
a similar rodent sanctuary. 

My silver Suzuki SUV doesn’t like
living outside in the in-climate weather
while my wife’s cute hybrid Camry
rests snug & warm within
our one-car garage, but my
vehicular pal patiently puts up
with the designated disrespect.

Our tomcat complains loudly
if I am too slow to feed him,
and the tawdry tale he tells
me wife is niggard nonsense.

By mid-morning I had to accept
the fatuous fact that I could never
pick out all the bucolic burrs
under my shepherd’s saddle,

so I soon found myself clicked into Facebook
searching out serious romantic images
to share with my spouse, who
would most certainly just delete them,
dismissing my gesture as silly
& sentimental tokens of distaff devotion,
but I do know she will probably
enjoy the garrulous gesture.

Glenn Buttkus

February 14, 2013


Posted over on dVerse Poets FFA

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