Legacy

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Legacy

“Undeservedly, we will atone for the sins of our fathers.”

---Horace.

On a Grecian urn

in a dark museum, I remember

a painting of the wedding of 

Pirithous & Hippodamia of Lapith,

where the drunken Centaur guests decided

they would steal all of the women,

and the royal guards had to slay them,

winning the Battle of Centauromachy.

Later, I imagined, they all dined

on roasted Centaur steaks,

long strips of fried Stallion phallus

and hundreds of broiled eyeballs.

Before Christianity, before we found

our messianic prophet to worship,

men mated with the Gods

and whelped demi-god offspring.

Pirithous was rumored to be fathered by Zeus.

But after the nuptials, he soon became bored

with being a king & husband, and just decided

one day to seek out the warrior Theseus

and befriend him; which he did by stealing

some of the other’s cattle. When they met

in confrontation, they were so enamored 

of each other’s youth & prowess, they

immediately did a scene right out of

Brokeback Mountain, and began a Bromance

that would end badly. 

They immediately began searching for adventurous

mischief to engage in, deciding to steal the daughters

of Zeus. Theseus kidnapped Helen of Sparta,

who at 13 years of age was still too young to marry--

but Pirithous was much more ambitious, choosing

to steal Persephone, the wife of Hades.

Impressed by the boldness of the plan, they returned

Helen back to her mother, and soon were journeying

off to the Underworld. But the trip proved to be arduous,

even for these strong determined youth, 

so when they came to a great rock on a high hill,

they decided to stop there and rest.

Suddenly they were surrounded by Furies,

and as they attempted to rise and fight, 

they found themselves magically imprisoned

on the rock.

As in many of these legends, we must believe

that somehow Hercules had heard of their fate,

and he showed up, offering to assist them.

He did manage to free Theseus from the granite,

leaving most of his shapely buttocks still attached

to the stone. 

But when he tried to free Pirithous,

the earth began to shake and Hades appeared,

telling them that Pirithous’ crime was too grave,

wanting to steal the wife of a God, and that

he would only be released from the stone

upon his death. 

All of this was printed on a large placard

beneath the urn, and oddly, I had taken

the time to read it in its entirety. Just

silliness, goofy antics, just fodder

for future comic books and Hollywood epics,

I thought.

But sobering, troubling ideas bubbled

up from cortical magma--were these

myths & legends any more absurd

than pitting Christ against Mohammed,

Buddha against Joseph Smith,

the Torah against the Koran,

the Bible against the New York Times

editorial page?

Being incarnate creatures in lesson,

we have always sought the solace

of spiritual guidance. For those who seek,

we found that the Gnostic scrolls & the hushed

whispers of ascended masters among us,

of Atlantis, of Lemuria, seem to suggest

all of our religions descended from Mythos;

just another entertaining fascinating

set of stories, once recited orally around

great bonfires while feasting on mammoth ribs;

always provocative, manipulative, leading

many of us to strife, cruelty, & martyrdom,

a never ending path away from peace & brotherhood.

Will enough of us awaken from this nightmare

in order to cope with the second coming, or

extraterrestrial craft landing on the White House lawn?

Glenn Buttkus

May 2013

Posted over on dVerse Poets--Poetics

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Pitfalls of Piety

Pitfalls of Piety 

“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation

of words, for when you control the manipulation of words you control

the people.”--Philip K. Dick

When faced with overwhelming odds,

with a foe who packs the weight of wealth,

with weapons & technology that dwarf imagination,

coupled to the arrogance & resolve to continue

iron-fisted control over you & many of your peers,

then at some tipping point it is inherent in your nature 

to say No, rebel, defy, resist, protest, to take up arms,

to become a freedom fighter, a patriot to some,

proudly wearing the sash of liberty, slashing

at the grand behemoth guerilla-style,

hit-and-run, martyrdom, sacrifice, never

facing him on a specific battlefield;

and perhaps History, depending 

on which regime writes it,

will exonerate your cruel excesses

and extol your virtuous results,

or it might just paint you as demonic,

other-directed, overly zealous, misguided,

brain-washed, mentally ill, merely

the willing pawn of some more intelligent

puppet masters with their own dark agendas.

The scurrilous sticking point seems to be

our fears of mortality, our spiritual choices,

our nagging need to find succor in some

religious cartel, to find our inspiration

in dusty holy books & devout crusades--

for religion and gruesome greed sticks to politics

like a honeycomb shirt, like gunpowder residue,

and is not easily preventable, regulated, or 

scrubbed away. 

In a new world where corporations openly own

politicians, where profit & personal gain usurp

all the messages within the sacred texts

and revered constitutions, where amendments,

manipulation, partisanism, & sad accommodations

gum up the great gears of government,

where the hoary prizes of history,

like natural resources, precious metals,

& cheap labor still steer the course of events,

where extant have-not nations are controlled

by dangerous demagogues who are predictably

and easily bought & paid for, where enlightenment

is considered blasphemy, where love

is callously twisted into a commodity,

where compassion is considered a superfluous sentiment,

where we are habitually & continuously conned,

phished, bullied, herded, ruled, and

led by liars wearing the bright mantle of piety

and the valued accoutrements we have 

given up to them--

we need to pause and just wonder

where in hell is the wisdom & purity

of the catechisms we were all taught

to recite, of the treasured words

left for us by our founding fathers,

and where the path to greener pastures

is actually hidden. 

Glenn Buttkus

May 2013

Posted over on dVerse Poets MTB

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Conundrum Squared

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Conundrum Squared

“And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy

to his mighty heart, until the Devil whispered behind the leaves,

“It’s pretty, but is it Art?”.” ---Rudyard Kipling

1.

Again, again, Islamic extremism rears its ugly head,

as immigrant converts murder & maim innocent people;

Infidelism now is the jihadist slur America suffers.

2.

Christianity has been misused by zealots throughout history,

yet today too many view Islam as a religious cancer,

and mosques as breeding grounds for extremism & terror.

3.

Yet much of the world remains tranquil ensconced within

Buddhism, Bahai, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, & Taoism.

Even the plethora of pagans prefer peace over chaos. 

4.

Does God, in his many guises, smile at our fervent posturing?

All inflexible worshippers seem to be lost in their stoicism,

and doves cannot fly in a vacuum of grief and misguided gall. 

Glenn Buttkus

April 2013

Posted over on dVerse Poets FFA

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Chaos Blossoming

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Chaos Blossoming

“Only a poet can capture the essence of chaos.” 

---P.H. Coase

Brilliant blossoms have now burst from their buds

like a living patchwork quilt draping

the ridges on the foothills near your farm;

luscious dew-splattered leaves,

fifty shades of green, have sprouted

in various shapes & configurations;

dressing the bare spines & gray appendages

of maple, oak, and alder that surround

the blue rainbarrel ranch like a fairies' ring.

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

As Kim Jong-un struts like a dwarf peacock,

attempting boldness, forcefulness, & breathing fire,

struggling like a plump larva surrounded by fire ants,

straining to take his inherited place in what’s left

of the Kim Dynasty, hoping that one day soon

his own colossal statue will stand granite

shoulder to shoulder with those of his father

& grandfather, playing nuclear roulette as

his long-range missiles perch like kimchi condors.

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

Hummingbirds are now taking turns hovering

at the blood red feeders hanging 

on your puncheon porch just above the hand-cut

wooden letters that spell Home backwards,

and I can easily hear the honied melodies

of the morning birds, setting up a spooky chorus

with the last of the night dogs belting out

the final notes of their mournful ballads;

seeing you in a Spring work dress squatting 

like a golden maiden, your hands buried

to the wrists in the rich black earth

of your several raised garden beds.

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

As investigators in Boston are now looking

for a young white man wearing a back pack,

a black jacket, a gray hoodie, and a white

baseball cap worn backwards, and another

white youth who dropped off a suspicious

bag minutes before the first cowardly blast

exploded, bringing death, blowing off limbs,

embedding shrapnel into the innocent

bodies of the the soft targets selected.

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

I can see sibling cats leaping white-bellied

into the air after my blue-belled cat lure,

with Sarge, the shepherd, lying next to

the metal barrel stove, watching me,

hoping for another hike up to the 

clear-cut bare foreheads at the edge 

of what’s left of the National forest, he & I 

sole witnesses to massive cloud thighs

masking a cold sun in an eggshell sky.

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

As the FBI arrested Paul Kevin Curtis for sending

lethal letters laced with the poison ricin to President

Obama, and a U.S. Senator.

As a fertilizer plant in windswept West, Texas

mysteriously exploded like an atomic bomb,

leveling 60 homes, killing several, wounding hundreds.

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

I can visualize that incredible star-choked wedge

of night viewed through the skylight above the bed

in your loft, dreams running clearly

like the icy water rushing sweetly & strongly

down Dry Bed Creek, constellations preening,

vying for our attention, spreading mythos.

But April remains Olympus and defiant,

and obviously it can not be captured

within the slim lines of one poem. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets MTB

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Dragon's Embrace

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Dragon’s Embrace

There I was

beyond the curtain, piercing the veil

as I reclined in meditation,

awakening to the arrival of quiet

billowing gray-white clouds that filtered

in through the high barred windows

thirty feet above,

moving to hover directly above me,

that suddenly erupted with twin bolts

of kundalini embrace,

-- white lightning --

of kundalini embrace

that suddenly erupted with twin bolts,

moving to hover directly above me,

thirty feet above

in through the high barred windows,

billowing gray-white clouds that filtered,

awakening to the arrival of quiet

as I reclined in meditation,

beyond the curtain, piercing the veil,

there I was. 

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

Cold Case

Rock stars too often deified,

being adrift in a kayak,

without any radar,

your ideas ready to pop

with tons of stats,

used to solve the murdrum,

this being your civic

duty, a much higher level

of pure investigation, Madam. 

Glenn Buttkus

April 2013

Posted over on dVerse Poets FFA

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Ursus Pretentious

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Ursus Pretentious

“I believe the common character of the universe is not harmony--

but chaos, hostility, and murder.”--Werner Herzog.

Timothy Treadwell was a true misfit, a charismatic clown,

a sometimes actor who was proud of being born on the

same day as Daniel Day Lewis, spending his youth

surfing, screwing, drinking, & doing drugs.

During one of his paranoid flights from society

and reality, he found his handsome self

on the Katmai Pennisula in Alaska,

a federal nature reserve swarming with

Ursus Horribilis--grizzlies.

He loved it there, and returned several more times,

feeling connected, driven to be there, convincing himself

that he was bonding with the fearsome bears--who

were busy eating salmon and wild berries in preparation

for their hibernation--and oddly tolerated his presence.

He became embolden and began to walk up to some

of them, giving them pet names, swimming with them,

almost petting them, facing some of them down--until

they became his life.

He returned summers for twelve consecutive years,

shooting hundreds of hours of film, passing himself

off as a bear expert, calling himself the Grizzly Man 

& an Eco-Warrior, appeared on the Discovery Channel, 

Dateline NBC, and once even on David Letterman, 

gave lectures to wildlife groups & school children, 

formed a non-profit organization called Grizzly People, 

soliciting enough money to keep funding

his annual treks to the Katmai.

He prided himself, bragged about facing the grizzlies

unarmed, never took a weapon with him, not even

a pistol--began to fancy himself as the bear’s

“Protector”. Looking into the camera at one point

he said, “I will die for these animals.”

It began to be obvious that his posturing was

becoming false braggadocio, shadow play,

a sad absurd sham. His effeminate speech,

gait, and demeanor did not ever threaten

the indifferent swarms of bear. At one point

he faced his own camera and said,

“I often wish I were gay--life would be 

so much easier.”

In 2003, after an altercation with an airline employee,

Timothy snapped, and returned to the Katmai

with a female companion just as Fall was

turning the peninsula crimson.

One cold night in October, a rogue embittered old boar

came into their tent and dragged Treadwell outside.

He was only armed with his camera, which he activated,

but had left the lens cap on--so what was recorded

was only the terrible audio of him being eaten alive.

His companion did not flee. She attacked the grizzly

with a frying pan. He turned and killed her too. 

The bear took two days to devour them both.

All that was found later were some tennis shoes,

part of a hand and wrist still wearing a man’s watch,

part of a head still attached to a picked clean

backbone, and part of a female ribcage. 

Years later director Werner Herzog made a documentary

about this strange deluded man, trimming the hundreds

of hours of raw footage down to 103 minutes of film.

“I found that in all the faces of the grizzlies he filmed,

there was no kinship, no understanding, no mercy.”

So after a strange decade of bruin charade,

Timothy Treadwell got what he truly wished for--

a martyr’s death. 

Glenn Buttkus

April 2013

Posted over on dVerse Poets MTB

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Judas Saves

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Judas Saves

“You shall be cursed for generations, but you will exceed all of them--

for you will sacrifice the man who clothes me.” --Jesus to Judas--

the “Gospel of Judas”. 

I met the guy in a smoky bar in Marrakech last week, while

traveling in Morocco looking for Burroughs’ Tangierian exiles,

you dig--searching for the ultimate high, the black meat, that

mugwump mind-fuck dust that would certainly realign my world;

for I was actively fleeing homosexuals, the John Birchers, dykes

on bikes, Islamic Jihadists, high gas prices, America’s broken

partisan promises, a failed marriage, a daughter I hooked on

heroin who now turned tricks in alleys behind redneck bars, 

a fag for a son who had a sex-change and demands to be

called Dolores--and the mystery dude called himself Jude.

He had a flaming red beard, piercing blue eyes, wore Arabic duds

and sat deep in the shadows at the back sipping absinthe and

smoking hasheech.

“Do you know me, man?” he asked.

“You sound pretty Jewish to me, are you an Israeli comedian

who can’t find his way back to the Catskills?”

“No, man, I am a Hebrew prophet, and I am not obscure, but

then no one really knows me, or ever really did--so they just

made up bullshit stories & myths about me.”

“I’m from Seattle--how about you?”

“Actually I was born in a Judean village called Kerioth. I ran with

a fast bunch called the Zealots, revolutionaries.”

“That’s heavy, man--so what’s your handle?”

“My proud family name is Iscairot, and it has been twisted raw

as a goat’s tit for centuries by self-righteous Christians, leading

to rampant anti-Semitism--Judah meaning the praised one, and

Sicarious meaning assassin--just a walking set of conflicted

contradictions, brother.”

“Wait a minute,” I stammered, my nostrils clogged with hashish smoke,

“Does that mean you knew Jesus?

“Knew him, loved him, and did his bidding.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he called me brother, the “best of the apostles”, and one

day he informed me that we two had to save the world.”

“Save it from what, man?”

“From itself, obviously--he ordered me to betray him to Caiaphas,

in` order to fulfill prophesy, to trigger humanity’s salvation.”

“Wasn’t it hard to do that?”

“I asked him if the situation had been reversed, could he have betrayed me--

and he told me that he did not have the strength to do it, and that’s why he

had chosen the easier task of being crucified.”

“Wow, man, and yet here you are, talking to me just like any other dude?

So....tell me what you think about Francis, the new pope?”

“Christ, you will soon find out that the new pope is just like the old pope,

that the Vatican conservatives will still be rattling the martyr’s bones, and

parish priests will continue to bugger every choir boy they can corner; 

but don’t get me started on the fucking Catholic Church?”

I raised my fists and stared for a moment at the ceiling fan,

“What about the Mongol hordes & the Islamic terrorists? Do you think

we will have more American boots on the ground soon in the

Korean Peninsula and in Tehran?”

Stark silence was his reply. I looked across the small

leather-covered reed table and the half-glass of absinthe was 

all that remained of our discourse. So I drained the dram

and roughly pushed my way out of the exotic bar.

I stood out in the street in the rain for a long time,

not sure if now I was enlightened,

or damned, or both. 

Glenn Buttkus

March 2013

Posted over on dVerse Poets-Poetics

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