Red Breasts

painting by gerhard richter.

Red Breasts

“The characteristics in human nature which we love best,

grow in a soil with a strong mixture of troubles.”

--Harry Emerson Fosdick.

A robin has built

her nest in eaves of our deck;

expecting chirps soon.

She said smiling solemnly near sunset,

underscored by airliners speaking jet.

When you open

the back door, mother bird

would fly away.

“I wish she would realize that

we mean her no harm,” my wife said.

“Do you speak Robin?” I asked.

My tall lady held her iphone

over her head, snapping images

of first three lovely blue eggs,

then later three featherless babes.

Our tom cat & his neighborhood puss-pals

                    left their dusty paw prints on top

            of the highest railing, 

while crows & grackles                       

                                             perched precariously 

                                                                                      near by

                    as mother & father brought

                    worms, grubs, beetles & seeds

                    to three gaping hungry mouths.

Odd, perhaps, that we felt so protective,

             hoping calamity was not an elective,

                         watching three fat fuzzy heads bob

                                   above the edge of the bird’s nest,

                          as we accepted the emotional job

           of providing the babies the best

                          surveillance that we could muster,

fully understanding that actually we would

                          be nothing more than witness to the

events not yet upon us;

like the teutonic shelves shifting

with the inevitable continental drift

devil-deep beneath us,

like the new steam fissures sprouting

on Mt. Adams, that is

Mt. St. Helens’ little brother,

readying itself to become

another May magma event,

like the rare trio of ghost rider tornados 

brewing within the thunderous womb

of the lightning-laced dark skies above, 

like the mysterious change of course

for Asteroid H2000, an ice giant

with a granite core

that just now

is headed our way.

Nature has agenda.

We are but pawns ready for

sacrifices to come.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets Poetics

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Blackthorne--Scene Thirty-Eight

image borrowed artofamerica.com

Blackthorne

Cinemagenic Thirty-Eight

Bonding

“Dance together & be joyous--even as the strings of a lute

are alone, they can quiver with the same music.”

--Kahil Gibran.

1(titan crane shot) 

High overhead the corral; Johnny Eagle turned back to the spindly 

sawhorse, as the many ‘pokes hung on the corral poles like crows

at a barbecue.

2(sound cue) thwack of a juice harp, guitar strumming, over an Indian

branch flute.

3(cut to medium close-up) angle on the face of the fat foreman, scowling

two chins deep within his flabby jowls.

--Breed, why not let three or four of us hold that stupid hammerhead, 

use a spade bit like everybody else & strap on some spurs, toss your

gear on this devil cunt & get to breaking her?

4(two-shot) the Indian turned and stared at the mound of flesh on the fence.

5(close-up) Johnny, the grin faded: Because I like horses, Graff. I know

that you do not understand this, but I’ll tell you anyway. None of the

horses I break ever go wild again, yet they keep their spirit & courage &

dignity.

6(medium close-up) Graff spits out a disdainful glop of tobacco.

7(sound cue) Indian drum beats, & castanets.

8(cut to close-up) as the filthy tobacco wad lands in the sawdust near

the Indian’s feet.

9(medium wide-shot & sound cues)

--Damn, Graff, that’s bullshit!

--Come on, asshole, let the Eagle work his magic.

10(medium close-up) Johnny, the smile back on his lips:

--You know, you’re lucky you got me today--I wanted to go fishing.

11(two-shot) over the Indian’s shoulder:

--Graff: Why did you come then?

--Johnny: Out of whiskey money, boss--besides I need a woman, &

they cost dinero too.

--Graff: Enough jawing.

12(sound cue) piano & clarinet.

13(medium wide shot) Johnny picked up the creaky saddle & moved

toward the mare.

14(cut to close-up) the ebony mustang’s wide nervous eyes.

15(two-shot) Johnny: Here it is, Concetta. Look at this, huh? I know,

I know, you don’t especially like saddles or riders either--but don’t be

silly. You are a horse. Men ride horses. I am a man. I will ride you.

16(tight two-shot) The mare shook her head violently as the man

approached her, pawing the dust with one front leg. He held the

saddle out at arm’s length, moving up to her head, & holding it

under her nose.

--Johnny: See that? Look at at. It smells OK--it’s just an old saddle.

Now, could that hurt you? Hell, no. See what a silly horse you’ve

been?

17(sound cue) harmonica & guitar.

18(medium wide shot) He touched her tense neck with it, as she nipped

at the air. He moved it slowly along the arch of her neck, stroking her

withers with the sweat-soaked leather. She shifted her weight from

hoof to hoof. He placed the saddle on her back. She whinnied & bobbed

her beautiful head, her long mane fanning in the breeze. He quickly

cinched-up, talking to her, stroking her loin & flank.

19(tight two-shot) Johnny: There now, pretty lady, you’re all set, huh?

You got everything--but a rider. Hey, why don’t I climb aboard & we can

hop around a little bit?

20(medium wide shot) The ‘pokes began to mumble, as the mustang 

turned her head, watching the man, but remaining still. 

21(tight two-shot) Johnny got a good grip on the reins & saddle horn as

stuck his left foot into the first stirrup. The crowd grew silent. He smoothly

stepped up into a standing position, with his right leg dangling. The coal

mare pranced & quivered. The saddle & tack creaked as he passed his

right leg over her back, then ramming his foot into the other stirrup. 

The mare complained as she bobbed her head. Johnny felt the tension

gathering between his legs. 

22(close-up) Johnny: Well, horse--it’s a nice day, isn’t it?

23(sound cue) snare drum &saxophone bleat. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets OLN

Would you like to hear me read this latest Cinemagenic Poem in my series?

Call to Liberty

image borrowed from fineartmerica,com

Call to Liberty

“I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops

of the world.”--Walt Whitman.

In the fall of 1956, when

I started junior high school,          the English teachers began

                                to tackle poetry in earnest.

                       It was abrupt adieu to limericks

                and sweet nursery rhymes,

        & a swift boy howdy to some

lame epic-length sing-song poem

        called HIAWATHA by a dead dude 

                 named Hank Waddy Longfellow, & most

                        of us were chanting, You’re a poet,

                                  but don’t know it,

                                  even though your feet show it; 

                                  they’re Longfellows;

followed furiously by a sicky-sweet poem

about some royal Greek fags        called OZYMANDIAS

                                  by Johnny Keats, then I think

                           there was a wrestling match with

               some archaic clumsy clunker called 

MY BRIGANTINE by J. Fenimore Cooper,

with Willy Wordsworth next up

               sharing some silly clap-trap verse called

                            I WANDERED LONELY LIKE A CLOUD--

and wouldn’t you know it,

these stomach-churning

overly Victorian romantic & saccharine-sentimental verses

           continued right into high school English,

                     as we were introduced to the Belle of Amherst

                                herself, Miss Emily D, whom Brandon Braggis said

                                          wrote sad depressed poems because she

                                probably was a dyke, & of course all those

                     love sonnets by Shakespeare, & those fey clever lines

                from Oscar Wilde, none of which I can remember,

only recalling that his real name was 

Oscar Fingal O’Flaherte Willis Wilde,

& that he was a stylish infamous queer

at a dangerous time when gay men

were often beaten to death or castrated;

but then in my sophomore year            I was struck with a literary bolt

                        of lightning called Walt Whitman,

& since I already was writing prose                   in creative writing classes,

             I was overjoyed to find out that the stoic rules

             dictating what poetry was, or even could be,

             had been trampled--as I read poems that had

words & phrases that ran wild & free 

like high desert mustangs,

                            that leaped out of the sea nets

like quartets of dolphins                   with the sun glistening on

                            their shining heads;         words that took flight,

               vibrating out of condor & eagle wings.

The first Whitman poem I encountered was a verse of war:

Beat! beat! drum!--blow! bugle! blow!

through windows--through doors,

bursting like a relentless force;

so rattle quicker heavier drums--in bugles wilder blow.

Old Walt was like a huge orange-keeled Ice Breaker,

cracking through my adolescent resistant permafrost,

suddenly cutting the hemp fetters on my own poetics,

                           putting me in mind of war drums

                           & military bugle calls,       as I imagined

                    the look that Davy Crockett gave to Jim Bowie

             when they heard Santa Ana playing the Deguello,

realizing that the fresh troops storming

the crumbling adobe walls of the Alamo

had “no quarter” on their lips;             or those stirring buglers

             leading Cavalry charges during the Indian campaigns

                      way out West--or those German bugle calls heard

                                 over the muddy trench tops, ricocheting

off barbed wire in No-Man’s Land;      or those WWII Japanese

                      bugle calls that signaled a Banzai attack,

                                                             or those eerie haunting

midnight Chinese Bugle calls during the Korean War,

                      often broadcast on loud speakers, & I welcomed all

of those Whitman cronies, those bellicose blood-soaked muses,

for Uncle Walt was truly my Liberator, whelping my undiscovered

poetic yearnings, the Captain of my future wayward voyages deep

into the Sea of Freedom---oh thank-you my Captain, my Admiral,

                                                                my Monarch, my Lord, 

                         for I continue to honor thee,

                         poetically & spiritually. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets Poetics

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Justuss Four All

image from hdwallfine.blogspot.com

Justuss Four All

“I shall conquer untruth by truth--& in resisting untruth,

I shall put up with all suffering.”--Mahatma Gandhi.

Bantam George W still pimps

             like a pernicious pisscock when visited

                           by the hungary media hoars midst the blackened

             Bushes,            watching his Daddy Bigness spank him pinklish

                           with a rolled-up Saudi flag,

                                       as jaunty Junior begs to have his pants

                                  pulled all the way goosed-down

                           so that he could moor-fully envoy the Monty-

                  momentum--& they all tin-can sea that

           W still sports that crooklyn simpletonish smyle

as he spews non-prop ignoredent, racecyst, elitryst epithreats,

           followed furiously by a hearty laff, several toots of pork-ribbed

                  flatulance, a stumblini cowtoy’s two-step as he tap-pranced

                            in his alligator-skinny London Larados, before rump-

                                    riding Republican hybred roosters, & tossing hand-

fools of honey boo-boo rotten eggs

against pretentious political postures

of the present-President, cakkling like

Gieger’s child that suddenly pops out

of disobedient sychophant’s chests,

red-naked & slimy, its rows of tiny teeth

sharpened to possum-perfection.

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

Never give a puse--pigeon a wind-up Glock, for the wait of it will way-down

his panties, leeding to the soiling of his Florsheims, just spooling his purple-

pinky panache, & whetting his quillious, flurious party-harbors; for his

Sillyness bee-leaves himselfish to be an amouritis Lucretio, all draked-up

in his slick zoot-feathers.

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

Terrence was the littletrane that wood, al-bee-it not kould, steem up the

lecherous terrain of mutinous dandylying-stems, searching in vane for

the legendary Round Mouse so that Evenhee could join the rusty ranks

or betreemoth Ironic Norses, all those leather-faced larcenous locomotives,

derailed, derelict & dusty, spider webbing in broken headlamps, rat’s nest

motels set up in busted boilers as steamless, never seamless whistles

are now & forever mute as a stringless lute buried beneath the sharpie-

thorns of belligerent blackberry bushes.

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

Calico cats with earthworm whiskers

gathered growling around carthage cans in the ally,

some grumpy, some lumpy, many just dumpy,

wheezing, caterhauling like a barber shop quatrain,

decked out in all nine suits, just particular peaces

of each in missorted collars, their legal clause smeared

rainflow-brite, their cattaboy-slits covered in cheap contexts,

with each I a differential hewn, there sand-dollar tungs

flicking like serpent-queen jelly-dancers.

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

I tell you all dog poets beg for word bones, or dig four them

with mischievous mechanical paws while wiggle-wagging

techno-collapsable ink-smeared tales, pantsing with their

terrycloth tongues, always thirsting for truth, always exposing

hairless loins as their peanuts dangle in the win-win, 

nearly butt-blind to failure; 

searching for participles of passion-fruit,

searching for lusty witches in rut,

searching for soft fat laps on wiccan legs,,

searching for phrase turns & ironclad ironies.

Here’s to the daffy drools--

may their words shine with foxfire,

soul-dust, hart-brakes, & brain-icing,

for the world needs them;

regardless of false evidence to the contrary. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets MTB

Would you like to hear me read this Cathacresis poem to you?

I Am--You Are--We Could Be

image from artflakes.com

I Am--You Are--We Could Be

“You were given this life precisely because

you are strong enough to live it.”--Anonymous.

I am from darkness,

and places of magnificent

light, just like the others.

I am from

deep Douglas Fir forests that blanket burly foothills that hunch up

like massive shoulders around seven volcanos, living large on the

lava beds in the Pacific Rim’s Ring of Fire, alongside the vast inland

sea that’s dotted with luscious green fern-covered islands, connected

to the actual ocean by a long wide Strait hispanic tongue that churns

saltwater over hundreds of miles of Sound, bays, harbors, super-ferry

lanes, tides, & playgrounds for passionate pods of orca.

I am from

countless men who have drown, who went down to the sea in ships,

then deeper to eternal rest; always a poor swimmer, but regardless,

fascinated with boats & ships of all kinds, even though the visceral 

nightmarish recall of perfect storms with eighty-foot waves haunts me.

I am from 

the passionate coupling of a 16-year old singer, who looked like Deanna

Durbin, & a mysterious serviceman who spent one night of eros with the

girl in the back seat of his Buick, before he shipped out for the conflict in

Europe in 1943; a faceless nameless young man who may have lived or

died without me ever knowing him.

I am from

a surrogate father, my maternal grandfather, who was an accomplished

woodsman, hunter, fisherman, artist, & a Socialist; self-taught & brilliant,

who painted surrealistic landscapes, & taught me about history, science,

philosophy, politics & life--& a terrible trio of stepfathers, the first of which

who believed for a time that he actually was my father, until the fateful

day we both realized the folly of that absurd assumption.

I am from

a very long line of muckrakers, loose cannons, malcontents, instigators,

& pariahs--freedom fighters, insurrectionists, teachers, warriors, writers,

pacifists & dreamers--& Scotland consistently captivates the dreamscape,

where I feel comfortable in kilts, love the windswept lochs, & roam the

endless verdant highlands--though, in this lifetime, I’ve never been there.

I am from

places of confidence, of over-achievement, of debate, of lecture, &

of performance--more than comfortable in the front row with my hand

up, or at the podium supported by power points, or on the proscenium

spouting Shakespeare, or happily at the microphone in a dark coffee

house reciting poetics.

I am from my world,

individually unique,

yet willing to share.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets Poetics

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Blackthorne--Scene Thirty-Seven

image borrowed from mrwallpaper.com

Blackthorne

Cinemagenic Thirty-Seven

Foreplay

“You may know where to touch her, but that does not mean

you know how. Take time to learn what she truly desires.”

--Stephan Labossiere.

1(tight two-shot) The Indian reached out slowly with his free

hand, touching her softly on the nose.

2(close-up) the mare’s eyes were wild, scared & angry.

3(medium two-shot) the mare flinched.

He soothed & praised her, touching & stroking her knotted neck.

--What a black beauty you are, beautiful black & so sleek; small

but powerful.

All the while he was inching the bridle closer to her bobbing head.

4(sound cue) Spanish guitar chords, slow strumming.

5(tight two-shot) Slowly, ever so slowly, he began to slip the bridle on.

--Good horse, sweet girl, that’s it, Johnny loves you. You like me, don’t

you? Like the smell of me & how I look at you, Concetta. I will just

put this nice bridle over your pretty head, OK? 

6(medium two-shot) The coal-black horse eyed the man, but did not

move away. She pranced some, & closed her teeth to the plain bar bit.

He gently touched her cheek. She opened her mouth to nip flesh &

closed it on cold steel.

7(sound cue) horse hooves rapping, with shrill complaints high up

in her throat.

8(medium close-up) She rolled her eyes, flattened her ears, squirm-

jumped & quivered. 

9(two-shot) Johnny spit the cigar stub out, & pulled her head down as

she made short staccato moans. 

--I will not hurt you, little one. When I am on your back, I will be your

lover man.--talking in a soft monotone.

10(medium close-up) He smoothly buckled the throat latch, tossed one

rein over her neck, & let the other one hang loose.

11(medium wide-shot) Cautiously the mare moved the grounded rein

around in the white dust, as the Indian turned his back on her & sauntered

to the rails. 

12(sound cue) Indian seed rattle & banjo chords,

13(medium close-up) Near the railings in a corner of the corral there was

a battered split-rail sawhorse, & on one side of it there were two colorful

but faded blankets--one was Nez Pierce, frayed, thin & sun-bleached,

the other was Mexican vaquero, covered with Aztec symbols. A dusty

yellow lariat & a thin well-worn busting saddle rested next to them. 

14(cut to traveling steadi-cam shot) panning the excited faces of

the crowd, old & young wranglers, their battered hats pulled down

low over their eyes--some were crippled & some were dude-ish

boardwalk porch punchers. 

15(as the camera pans smoothly) we notice the bright white lettering

on the tallest reddest barn, BRONSON AUCTIONS. 

16(halfway around, cut to a crane shot outside the corral) pan-circling

the flannel & levi shirted backs, some in chaps, all in old boots.

We see Johnny Eagle with his hands on his hips, talking & chuckling,

his back still to the mare.

17(sound cue) piano, & banjo with harmonica slowly huffing.

18(medium close-up, angle on) a brash but nervous young cowboy; 

peach fuzz on his ruddy cheeks, curly red hair poking out of his hat:

--I got four-bits says she’ll toss your red ass in the dirt!

19(close-up) Johnny sporting a wide toothy smile:

--Keep your money, kid--buy me a drink after the dance. Hey, would

you like to warm her up for me?

20(two-shot) the young cowboy holding his hands up:

--Christ no, Johnny. I like my cojones right where they are!

21(medium wide shot) More laughter erupted--Johnny always kept

men laughing, unless he was mean-drunk & then he was liable to

use one of his sharp knives. 

22(medium close-up) a white-bearded prospector in a tattered hat:

--How do you think you’ll do with her?

23(sound cue) clarinet squawk & drum roll.

24(two-shot) angle over the old man’s shoulder:

--Better than you, grandfather--as Johnny swept up the Mexican

blanket in a smart swirl, snapping up dust like a matador. 

25(tight two-shot) he turned back toward the waiting dance partner:

--Do you see the blanket, horse?--walking closer to the mare.

--Smell it, young lady, see, it smells like your sister & brother--& 

what a nice blanket it is, huh? Pretty & bright & harmless. Would it

not look lovely on your back? Sure, sure it would. 

26(medium wide shot) the Indian stood still alongside the horse. She

fidgeted, rolling the bar in her panting mouth, leaving metallic tastes.

27(sound cue) Tack metal & leather harmonizing over a guitar chord.

28(tight two-shot) He placed the blanket on her back in one deft

movement; she shivered. The blanket moved but stayed in place.

29(medium close-up) Johnny--the blanket will be fine, you’ll get used

to it. The saddle is next, then me. We will leap for joy, eh?

30(sound cue) Castanets, guitar, & harmonica. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets OLN

Would you like to hear me read this Cinemagenic poem to you?