Call Me Blackthorne

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Call Me Blackthorne

“The secret of my influence has always been

that it remained secret.”--Salvador Dali.

If, 47 years ago,        something took a whole year to create,

                   emerging at around 100,000 words,

                   but nobody seemed interested in it--

so no one read it in it’s entirety, 

                         & now for decades

                         it has sat patiently on

                         dusty shelves in my many domiciles,

              it’s brilliance unappreciated,

              it’s uniqueness unshared,

              it’s characters unknown,

              it’s literary heart hardening,

              it’s hidden emotions unfelt,

would it not fully inhabit the realm of a Secret?

It all started on the California desert,

when I was stationed at NAS Miramar.         The base theater only charged 

                                   a quarter, & they changed the movie

                              every day, so at that time

                    they screened a hell of a lot

          of Spaghetti Westerns; there 

were hundreds of them in the late 60’s,

          & like many others I became fascinated

                     by their dreamlike artifice, taking a Hollywood

                               staple, a cinematic classic genre, & burlesquing it,

where all the gunshots sounded tinny

& phony, kind of like                    the silly sound of fake pistols firing

                     on those Kellogg’s Sugar Pops

                     1950’s TV commercials, when

                                                    they put those kiddy Western stars

                      on the boxes, you remember, like

Guy Madison, Andy Devine, Gene Autry, William Boyd, & Roy Rogers--

                      reminding me about how excited we Western

                                                    freaks all became in the late 50’s

                      when the Adult Western Shows 

took over all the channels, ruled the airwaves for a long time, when

James Arness, Clint Walker, James Garner, Richard Boone, Dale Robertson

& Ward Bond                              began to take plots “seriously”.

The Westerns filmed in Italy & Spain

                                                                were like a reinvention of the genre,

where the horse tails were all too long,

the stage coaches were all too small,

& the same 20 voice over actors             seemed to do the lip synching 

                        on all the movies, lots of heightened absurd

                        violence, grittier sex, incredible musical scores,

blatant do-overs of every classic Japanese Samurai movie ever made;

& there I was, ready to write my first novel, 

                         deciding to use the Spaghetti West

                                  as a springboard, using graphic violence & sex,

                                               well researched weaponry,

                                                            & existential components.

When I first returned to college in 1969,

I showed the manuscript to several

of my college English professors,

the younger guys who wrote paperback quickie novels

in the summer, often using a Nom de Plume--

                 & to a man, they were flabbergasted, blown away.

                 “It’s like Vonnegut or Bukowski wrote a Western, just

                               completely outrageous, violating every principle

                               or parameter of the genre. The Western Writers

                               of America would have had apoplexy if they read it.”

I decided to consider their vitriolic 

protests & criticisms as high praise,            for I had succeeded in writing

                               something that was both authentic

                               & unconventional; fuck them.

                   I returned to it every few years

                          to reacquaint myself with its mystique. 

                   As a film buff, cinephile, actor, teacher, & poet,

over the years I have begun

to feel braver & more innovative,         so much so that I even

                   created a new poetic form--Cinemagenic.

The nearly forgotten manuscript 

began first to whisper                    & then call out to me

                       each time I passed it on its shelf:

Hey, Slick, here’s your chance

to begin to share some of me, 

& to finally make that movie of yours,

the one in your head as you wrote me.         “Damn, why not,” I thought.

A joyous virile exciting process

began to emerge, where upon

I would use a tiny bit of the manuscript

with each poem, & break it up into episodes,

                           into pages of a screenplay, & yet

                   something leagues beyond a mere screenplay,

a volatile verbalization of every nuance of the production,

my movie,

my poem,

my Frankenstein,       A Movie of the Mind.           So I began

                                   the labor of love, transforming my manuscript

into poetic filmmaking,

31 episodes to date,

with hundreds more to come;

but like a coy maiden, 

I shall not give up all my secrets at once, no,

just a little tease at a time,

keeping them hungry for more. 

                                                                                

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets Poetics

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