Blackthorne--Scene Twenty-Five

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Blackthorne

Cinemagenic Twenty-Five

Advice

“I always pass on good advice--it’s the only thing to do with

it, for it’s never of any use to oneself.”--Oscar Wilde.

1(sound cue) harmonica.

2(two-shot)

--Barnes: sure, like rats in your grain silo.

--Buck: why doesn’t this town just hire some gunfighters

of it’s own & checkmate Bronson?

3(medium close-up) Barnes: because he’s the one with all the

damn money, the gunslingers, & the politicians.

4(close-up) Buck: and I suppose your crackerjack sheriff is hard

on strangers & easy on Bronson?

5(wide two shot) angle on the barber:

--Barnes: it ain’t that simple. Joe Hopp is from Abeline, and he’s good

with a gun, has a hell of a reputation. I’ve seen him pistol whip several

bad hombres. He is no coward. 

--Buck: then what the hell is he?

6(tighten the two-shot) the barber keeps trimming Buck’s thick beard

with his nickel-plate scissors.

--Barnes: careful, I guess, patient--been here a little over a year. The last 

two sheriffs didn’t fare too well; one was back-shot, the other went

fishing & just lit out. Hopp is bidding his time. I don’t think Bronson

bought his badge.

7(sound cue) the scissors cutting hair & a clarinet mimicking the squeak.

8(medium close-up) the beard begins to disappear, thick clumps of hair

lying on the barber sheet, a strong cleft chin beginning to be seen.

--Buck: what’s the story on Bronson’s brothers?

--Barnes: he’s got two of them.

9(two-shot) angle on Barnes as he pours some hot water into a fat

black shaving mug, then whipped up some frothy lather from the

soap cube in the bottom.

--Barnes: why do you ask, mister?

10(sound cue) acoustic guitar chord.

11(medium close-up) Buck stares out into the street at the cold-shadow

people moving through the hot dust--and beyond them to the phantoms

of the past.

--Buck: I tossed one of them out of a second story window & I’m figuring

on some trouble coming my way.

12(tight two-shot) the barber begins dabbing the wet steaming lather into

the pepper fuzz that remained, working it in with the brush.

--Barnes: then be smart, ride on.

--Buck: such a friendly town--you’re the second person

in a half hour to give me that advice.

13(hold the two shot) The barber opens a long straight razor

and begins to shave him.

14(sound cue) the scrape of the sharp blade on a face, blended

with a violin mimicking the scraping.

--Barnes: you look like a drifter, just blow back out onto the prairie,

slap leather before we have to bury you in boot hill.

15(sound cue) cello & snare drums.

16(close-up) Buck: thanks, but I think I’ll be sticking around

for a bit.

17(wide two-shot) angle on the barber, the black dog still under

the table watching the door.

--Barnes: plenty of men have tried to take on the Bronsons, our

cemetery is full of them, & old Cash is still the hairy bear. 

--Buck: I’ve got roots here.

18(close-up) Barnes: this ain’t the same town you left, son--

your roots are dead & gone for sure. 

19(tight two shot) angle on the hunter:

--Buck: Bronson is just a man; he bleeds red like the rest of us.

--Barnes: he behaves like a baron & his army of lead-pushers

is like a twenty-headed Hydra.

20(sound cue) pioneer fiddle bar.

21(medium close-up) the razor makes several passes down his

cheek, & the skin shone both pale & pink. The barber wiped the

lather on a towel over his shoulder.

22(back to the two-shot) over the barber’s shoulder:

--Buck: how’d this town get so dog-fucked?

23( tight two-shot) angle on the barber:

--Barnes: Bronson showed up here about ten years ago, had a

carpet satchel full of money & six men with him. He started out

buying the old ACE DUECE, sprucing it up to become the CHINA

DOLL. He made a fortune, & every year he bought up more of

the town, growing more powerful. He lets cowpokes & strangers

have their fun, takes their money, & then his men escort them

out of town. 

--Buck: I’m not a stranger.

--Barnes: so you say. 

24(medium wide shot) the barber wipes the straight razor clean,

and sets it in a tray; the shave is over.

--Barnes:  look, I’m an old man--my son tells me I talk too much.

Maybe you work for Bronson, maybe he’s finally decided to shut

me up, maybe you are my assassin. You do stink of death.

25(two-shot) Barnes had spoken calmly, matter-of-fact, without

emotion. He wipes the excess lather off of Buck’s face. 

--Buck: I’ve seen more than my share of it.

26(sound cue) coronet & clarinet duet.

27(hold the two-shot) angle on the barber:

--Barnes: Paul is the youngest, a chickenshit tinhorn coward,

he hides behind the guns of the others.

28(medium close-up) the barber returns to the hair-cutting,

running a red comb through the hair, & snipping the ends off.

--Buck: And Thor is the bad ass, right?

--Barnes: Uh-huh, he shot a fifteen year old farm kid to death

right here in the street last month. He ramrods the Triple-B

Ranch, & he sticks to Cash like a foreskin; he is the enforcer,

& the worst of the hired killers would follow him into hell.

29(close-up) Buck: well shit-fire, hell will pop open when

I meet up with that wicked son of a bitch. 

30(sound cue) saxophone squawking.

31(medium close-up) Cheewa growls like a grizzly in a 

bear trap, and jumps to his feet.

Glenn Buttkus

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The Last Tanenbaum

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The Last Tanenbaum

“Violence in the voice is often only the death rattle

of reason in the throat.”--H.G. Bohn.

Christmas came,

before I left the last time

after our painful disengagement;

one of my last memories was stopping

at the door and looking back

at you next to the tall fir in your living room,

resplendent, laden with the children’s decorations,

colorful blinking lights, strings of yellow-white popcorn,

& those damn silly Simpson’s bulbs--

feeling the rush of recent memory

when we found it on that gray rainy day

out on the bluff among its evergreen brethren

at that unique tree farm that overlooked the Sound,

how it spoke to us:

“Hey, look at me, for I am the one you seek,

the tree that will love you.”

We were four under two umbrellas

while I worked on my knees in the mud,

sawing, sawing with that jagged crosscut blade,

deeper & deeper into its stubborn trunk,

finally toppling it over into the girl’s anxious arms,

before carrying it wet in our eight hands,

ping-ponging through the dripping ragged rows

before hoisting it high onto the rails atop

your silver Volvo station wagon, tethering

it with green & yellow twine--

oh how we giggled, laughed, and caroled

along those several happy miles, listening

to it shift & sway above our bobbing heads.

Later, on a brief coffee date, you told me about

about that night, soon after a lonely New Year’s Eve,

when you dismantled it alone, packing

the decorations gently back into their bright boxes,

and how you kept staring at it, erect, robust--

& for reasons never articulated, you could not bear

to part with it completely, to hand it over to the garbage

man, because somehow this tree was different.

You dragged it outside, and leaned it up on the lee 

of your house, near your bedroom window, where

it rested month after month, until Winter

moved into Spring.

I drove by your place several times & saw it there;

brown-black, brittle, beaten down, yet defiant,

nestled against the siding,

a decaying, 

perhaps forgotten sentinel,

perhaps symbolic of the last gasps

of our relationship,

perhaps being punished, tortured, abused

as bizarre retribution.

Intrigued & saddened, one day

before you came home from work,

I could stand it no longer

& decided to move it.

As my hands slid under its dry boughs,

it was still capable of bleeding pitch,

& unbelievably, on its underside,

some of its needles were still green;

death had not fully claimed it yet.

I cradled it in my arms, pulling

it upright, whereby most of its driest needles

began to fall off, & I swear I heard

a faint whisper on the warm breeze;

“Thank-you, oh thank-you

for coming back, for I could not

have lasted much longer.”

I dragged it for an hour

into the woods

on the east side of your house,

leaning it up against an indifferent alder.

It seemed so frail, so naked that

I had to hug it one last time,

and then sit beside it, holding

the green branch, talking to it softly,

waiting for its final breath. 

Glenn Buttkus

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Farmer's Market

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Farmer’s Market

“When tillage begins, the other arts follow. The farmers,

therefore, are the true founders of human civilization.”

--Daniel Webster.

Love the colorful splash

of an open-air market

midst the arsenic-gray concrete

of a fallow-brown urban landscape,

those international flags & flavors,

endless rows & tiers

of fruits, meats, candies, glass art, jewelry,

and apparel;

being privileged to wander along

rough burlywood puncheon planks,

interfacing with ceramic tiles

of cinnabar, cornfower-blue

& terra cotta,

moving past silver racks

of screaming silk scarves;

congo-pink, atomic-tangerine, b’dazzled-blue,

bitter lime, British racing-green,

carrot-orange & heliotrope stripes;

huge jars of jelly beans, pungent platters

of chocolate confections, mossy burlap bags

of exotic coffees & far-eastern teas;

bunny-dust grime on steel-wheeled carts,

carrying stacks of Egyptian-blue plastic carriers--

signs of every size with barn-red, lemon butter, 

& saffron letters advertising fat salmon slices,

falu-fallays of pale white trout,

cerulean-frost sides of sea bass

on steaming beds of sparkling ice,

sharing the chill with squads of

cadmium-orange crab legs

& beach-sand clamshells,

surrounded by zip-locked sweating baggies

of cerise-chopped clam-bites;

where Asian, Indian, & Caribbean skin pigments

glisten on barkers in cyber-grape hats,

apple-green & mustard-yellow shirts,

khaki aprons with raspberry-stained sashes,

announcing their wares in several accents;

always finding buskers sprawled out 

on goldenrod blankets, Bulgarian-rose prayer rugs,

& cobalt-blue pillows, playing their acoustic guitars,

mahogany violins, chrome harmonicas, ivory accordions,

& brass saxophones, their blood-stained

blizzard-blue eyes smiling as the street strains

of music weave claret mists & beaver-beige moments,

as upside-down black-bean hats & lipstick-red

coffee cans gather liberty-green bills & silver faced-coins

with copper hearts, as grizzly & liver-brown dogs

sit patiently at their sides, their gray-green eyes

begging convincingly,--strumming & bowing amazon-green

strings with bone-ivory white fingers poking out

of black leather cut-off gloves, plunking 

with carnelian red & coquelicot electric-orange picks,

blowing hard into spit-soaked reeds, pressing

the brass keys lovingly;

wearing cyan, puce, apricot, & Hollywood pink

dress ties, festooned with ruby, jade, & emerald

stick pins, with their red-white-& blue velvet-lined

instrument cases, peeling sadly with faded

flaxen & falu leather strips, leaning against

golden gate-orange pillars & Islamic-green curtains;

most of the musicians in worn denims, tractor-green ball caps,

& eggplant lens sunglasses, many with

Honolulu-blue or jazzberry ear rings;

where even the walkers-by were decked out

in Mardi Gras finery; magenta, watermelon, 

& mango jeans, with lemon curry stains

on their licorice t-shirts, ginger sticks

in their playful grips, padding along

in Barbie-pink & crayola-red tennis shoes.

As I exit, I clutch to my chest

the strobe-light rainbow wild-flower emotions

conjured by prolonged immersion

in a passionate palette of pigments,

hugging them for hours, until they fade, 

begging sweetly for replenishment.

Glenn Buttkus 

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Ragnarok

artwork by george wright

Ragnarok

“I existed from all eternity, and behold I am here, and shall be

to the end of time, for my being has no end.”

--Kahill Gibran.

It reappears like gestures-obscene written

in invisible-ink, always after we become

tumult-tired of our gods & lords,

our bile-bankers,

our philosopher-kings,

the piety-privileged;

final-fatigued by temple-promises,

dream-hollows, mandate-mangling,

we have the clarion-dawning, 

& find ourselves wonder-willing

to topple the gold-tables of the greed-hungry

money-changers, after nausea-waves

lead us to nothing-worship.

Perhaps the dust-prophesies,

myth-misinterpretations of antiquity

were not really folly-misinformation,

perhaps the chaos-blossoms surging up

in this moment-presence in each hidden

corner-crumble of this planet, though

most certainly not fresh-budding,

are truly the blood-flowers heralding

that the age-of-axes has returned,

with its peace-destroy, hope-cleaving

buzz-saw at full-rev, because

it does not require angel-eyes

to witness 

children murdering their parents,

mothers killing their infants, 

as incest-waves sin-swirl,

brothers slaying brothers,

street thugees wilding-gone,

border-blindness, sect turning

upon sect, country upon country,

& sadness-worse, upon

its own people;

for most of us lip-serve consent

& knowledge-accept that the oceans

are rise-rapid, that the sea itself

is dying from garbage-ingestion--

soon, too soon I fear,

we will force-hear the hoot-horrible

of Heimdall blowing taps on the blood-brass

of the Gjallarhorn, as mythos-Norse

performs an ice-blood encore, 

& the Gotterdammerung  will lion-leap

upon us again, & the dream-twilighting

will suffer terminal day-loss, where

no one will be solid-safe, as madness

dark-devours our mind’s-eye,

and the armies-many will become two,

before massing-murderous on the divers-deathly,

eternal-vast fields of Vigrid--

where the mingled-white Aesir will be led

by Odin, one-eyed, wolf-flanked, raven-hovered,

thrusting his god-spear Gungnir toward

the Armies-Evil led by Loki, monarch death-fist,

who will gladly unleash the Frost Giants

& Mountain-Trolls of Jotunheim,

the hell-hound called Garm,

the tenfold-terrible serpent of Midgard,

flanked-fierce by the Fire-Giants led by Surt,

spilling magma-scald out of Muspelheim, 

before sending the dragon-dun Nidhogg

to hunger-knaw at the root-sacred bones

of the indispensable Yggrasill;

God-demise will bubble-burst wound-open

like fruit-rot--Odin will be alive-swallowed

by the great were-wolf Fenrir, 

mighty Thor swinging-savage his war-hammer

would ultimately kill the serpent-humungous 

Jormungandr, but even he would hero-stagger

those nine-steps before poison-perishing,

just as Surt sets the entire world ablaze

with his flame-sword as the earth

in panic-recoil endeavors to sink back

into the sea to extinguish its anguish-blue,

as the burning heavens split open

and the insect-people scurry from their homes,

the dim dwarves stand weeping at their stone doors,

the sun turns ashen-black, and every land mass

silent-sinks into the sea-maw, creating

steam-clouds that hiss-holy as they quell

the flame-prodigy that had been sin-licking

the tendrils-tender of Heaven’s-Gate. 

Yet, even yet, as the pulpy-prophets

& the high-holy dead-scroll texts espouse,

ALL will not, cannot be forever-lost,

for as a species we survived the Great Flood,

the sinking of Atlantis, the loss of Lemuria,

& the Ice-Age, so even after Ragnarok

new-life will triumphant-rise out of the 

gestation-boiling womb-wetness of the

oceans-anew,

and as planned, 

the survivors-two, whether

Lif & Lifpucir,

Eve & Adam, or

Sid & Nancy,

will repopulate the Earth-clone,

& their descendants will enjoy a new era,

a full century of peace,

where gods & men will live

without wickedness,

all of them dreaming the impossible dream,

attaining the unachievable--

or not. 

Glenn Buttkus

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Bluebird

artwork by sunita khedekar

Bluebird

Bluebird said to me, “get up,

my grandchild, it is dawn”.

--Navajo song.

Bluebird was the town,
not found on any map.

“Happiness found here.”

read the sign along the country lane

where one entered, and

“May happiness accompany you

upon leaving; thanks for sharing--

come again.”  read the hand-painted

sign as one exited. 

“What a presumptuous place I thought,”

Why had the blue bird captured the laurel

of happiness, from the Tang Dynasty to

Dorothy warbling about rainbow riding;

why not a red bird, a yellow bird?

B.B. King doesn’t sing about happiness

when he sings the blues.

On the day I visited, there had been

a vicious thunderstorm dogging me

for hours, & yet within the township,

there was only sunshine, warmth,

fellowship, a song on every lip;

Every house & building was painted

in bright cheerful colors, rainbow-drenched,

electric, shimmering, crushing cynicism,

dodging depression; it was like strolling

the streets of Brigadoon.

In a cove, somewhere on a seashore,

built on the banks of a beautiful blue lagoon,

with seafood restaurants, fish shops,

and sailor lore everywhere along the west side,

dozens of fishermen’s dories stacked

in the white sand, yellow-blue fishing nets

drying over racks in the steaming sun--

and everywhere

               there were wonderful

                                blue kites of all sizes, 

all of them winged,

                               like azure eagles, 

                           cobalt hawks, 

                indigo owls, 

drifting in the warm thermals, 

shaking 

their silken blue tails 

vigorously.

There were three strange blue birds

wandering about town, tame as chickens,

proud as peacocks, part parrot, part jay,

fanning their aquamarine tail feathers 

joyfully--

their voices seductive, 

their songs siren-like; 

rich, syrupy 

& eerie.

After a few stolen hours

I could not bear another moment

of beauteous blue-bliss--

God, I actually missed

my natural negativity,

my sinful sarcasm, so

I zipped up my black slicker

& thrust myself headlong

back into the storm,

back into

the real world,

& oddly as I sped out of Bluebird,

gleefully greeting the grayness,

I felt genuine relief, not remorse;

for one needs the darker shades too

it seems, as day must have night,

in order to be 

whole, 

complex,

complete,

human. 

Glenn Buttkus

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Otto Wolfgang Maximus

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Otto Wolfgang Maximus

“Man is a dog’s idea of what God

should be.”--Holbrook Jackson.

A couple

in California

left

their 13 year old

dachshund

tied to a post

outside

a pet shelter.

“He needs care.

We are seniors,

sick & broke;

have no choice--

please put him

to sleep.”

Leave No Paws Behind

stepped in,

provided Vet-aid,

then re-united

Otto

with his

owners--

a happy ending,

for once. 

Glenn Buttkus

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