The Off Ramp

Image borrowed from bing

The Off Ramp

“I think giving money is the worst thing

people can do. It enables panhandlers

to manage their addictions.”

--Bill VanderMeer

Director of the Union Gospel Mission

In California it is usually Hispanics

selling oranges or flowers,

but around here as you line up

for the light at the head of the off ramp

the panhandlers rule,

young and old,

usually solo, but the other day

I saw a young couple on the curb,

he was shirtless and had long dirty hair

as he played a pawn shop beater guitar,

she was braless in a skimpy halter,

wearing a floppy men’s fedora.

They had a weaved basket between them,

and several large bills were stacked up in it.

Their sign read:

“Need to pay rent to her Mom next week.”

A dwarf in an oversize pea coat and watch cap

sporting a patchy beard:

“Out of luck--need a buck.”

A young man with a soldier’s buzz cut

in a torn Seahawk’s sweatshirt:

“I’m like Obama-I need change.”

A handmade cardboard sign

stuck in a flower pot read:

“Broadway panhandler moved to 65th

and E. 8th--appearing between 

11 a.m. and 7 p.m.”

A well dressed man in a business suit,

with spiky hair and clean fingernails:

“I love to help. Need to give. Please take

some money.”

A 6’ 4” 350 pound Samoan in a wife beater,

wearing long shiny sports shorts and flip-flops:

“Need money for a DNA test. My girlfriend

might be my sister.”

A stooped over elderly man wearing a filthy

wool overcoat, bald and toothless:

“My wife has been kidnapped, and I am 

$5.00 short of the ransom.”

A large legless black man in a wheelchair

with his portable O2 bottle in his lap:

“Give me some money or I’ll kick you

in the face.”

An old woman with cheaply dyed red hair,

balding in front, with a wispy mustache:

“Granny needs to have a tattoo removed.”

A short middle-aged man in a nasty looking

soiled sweatshirt with cut-off sleeves, his

filthy arms covered in tattoos:

“Need money for alcohol research.”

A youngish man with bushy unkempt hair,

wearing glasses with masking tape at

the center, missing several teeth:

“Will take verbal abuse for money--God bless.”

A tall muscular black man in a backwards ball cap,

wearing a high school letterman’s jacket:

“Need money for beer, drugs, and hookers.

Hey, at least I’m not bullshitting you.”

A large sign on the side of a city bus:

“Promote real change--not spare change.”

A small sign tacked on a phone pole:

“Panhandling is legal--get over it.”

Glenn Buttkus

September 2012

Posted over on dVerse Poets

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Cento For Cupid's Darts

painting by guillaume seignac

Cento For Cupid’s Darts

"And yet to say the truth,
reason and love keep
little company together nowadays."
---William Shakespeare

I breathe deep, taking my shoes off,

shivering as I feel the lawn’s tongue

green & dewy on my feet.

From what I’ve tasted of desire,

I hold with those who favor fire.

Let us go and make our visit in the room

where women come and go

talking of Michelangelo.

Angelheaded hipsters burning for

the heavenly connection

to the starry dynamo

in the machinery of the night.

I love you as certain dark things

need to be loved, in secret,

between the shadow and the soul.

You boys can keep your virgins--

give me hot old women in high heels

with asses that forgot to get old.

“Does my sexiness come as surprise--

that I dance like I’ve got diamonds

at the meeting of my thighs?”

I charge you that you make preparations

to be worthy to meet me, and I charge you

that you be patient and perfect

until I come.

Hoorah for the large men who lie

between the breasts of bestial Marj.

Just to wake up, look across the expanse

of our pillows and know today,

I will marry once more.

Sweet, there is nothing left to say

but this, that love is never lost--

ships tempest-tossed

will find harbor in some bay,

and so we may.

Glenn Buttkus

September 2012

CENTO CONTENTS

Stanza 1:  Claudia Schoenfeld from PER FUMUM--THROUGH THE SMOKE.

Stanza 2:  Robert Frost from FIRE & ICE.

Stanza 3:  T.S. Eliot from THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK.

Stanza 4:  Allen Ginsberg from HOWL.

Stanza 5:  Pablo Neruda from LOVE SONNET VII

Stanza 6:  Charles Bukowski from LOVE IS A DOG FROM HELL

Stanza 7:  Maya Angelou from STILL I RISE.

Stanza 8:  Walt Whitman from TO A COMMON PROSTITUTE.

Stanza 9:  E.E. Cummings from BETWEEN THE BREASTS

Stanza 10: Brian Miller from POPPING SILK & OTHER COMPLEXITIES

Stanza 11: Oscar Wilde from HER VOICE

Posted over at dVerse Poets FFA

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Red Door

image borrowed from bing

Red Door

The blazing orb dove into the ocean

like a huge fiery California waterbird,

drenching the white caps on the cruel waves

that rolled merciless against miles

of white Malibu beach,

as summer dusk settled sonorous

on Santa Monica, but the teen age girls

squealing on the ferris wheel at POP

did not hear the soft footsteps in the deep sand,

did not see a solitary figure strolling

the emptiness beneath the pier,

merely a shadow within a shadow

watching the crimson and orange surf

hammer the earth, then slide back

and pound it again, leaving dirty foam bubbles

that fizzed and popped near his brogans. 

The gathering twilight approached him

as he stared out at a convoy of Naval vessels

gliding deliberately toward the horizon like gray phantoms

bristling with their precious cargo of cannon fodder.

He had escaped, had served, had seen

the mystic side of that huge expanse of flat water,

understood having mortars for breakfast,

before swishing the hungry jungle flies

from the dozen severed heads stuck firmly

on bamboo stakes, dead eyes searching

for America with their testicles crammed

in their midwestern mouthes,

lips sewn up crudely with green vines,

compounding the bright coral covering his cortex,

an inner reef that grew in his head 

like a cancerous tumor, blockading even

the Mary Jane craft that churned through

the blood canals, its denizens of demons

working hard at licking the pink pulp

off the backside of his eyeballs

as he continuously sought more fuel

to feed the cold furnace 

his heart had become, pouring

chemicals into the void, sticking

his head deep into the darkness,

chasing the black-hooded monks

who had no faces as they

wandered in the fibrous fog

captured by the impenetrable canopy

of horrid memories 

and nauseous nightmares,

because the mother fucking purple scars

of war do not fade easily,

and shrapnel does not dissolve

from hippie spittle showers,

and nothing seemed to ease

the terrible ache in his chest,

not tanned teen torsos

nor soft California nights,

not the medicine from Mexico

nor mind bending mushrooms,

but his mother’s voice chimed

clearly within the sea gulls cries,

helping him to realize

he had to come down,

had to get a grip, 

had to return to the world,

which probably brought him to this beach,

to peer through the barnacle-laden stanchions

at the old Hotel Casa del Mar, its rod iron

balconies swarming with heroin ghosts,

yet somehow not even 

Edmond O’Brien as Chuck Dederich

or Alex Cord as Zanky Albo,

or the VA counselors,

or his mother

could convince him 

that now was the time

to join the congregation

of the Church of Synanon. 

Glenn Buttkus

September 2012

Posted over on dVerse Poets OLN63

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Road Trip

image by massimo venturi

Road Trip

While on a road trip to Texas, 

parked at a rest stop outside Ft. Stockton, 

along the straight concrete snake of I-10,

chewing on cold slices of Pecos cantaloupe,

we got out to stretch our legs.

My wife, who does most of the driving, 

walks for 15 minutes to shake the road kinks out,

while I find a cement bench in the shade

as refuge from the 115 degree Southwest sun.

Parked next to us was a white SUV

with one of those professional stick-on signs

on the front doors; it read

TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL

Massage and Spa

Wimberly, Texas.

An older man, perhaps in his 70’s,

with a great shock of white hair,

wearing a Hawaiian shirt and black slacks,

was struggling with the leashes for his

two small spotted dogs. He noticed

I was staring at him, so he dipped his chin,

smiling a howdy,

just as I realized that I needed to call

some of my friends in Washington State

to inform them that our trip was running long

and that I would miss an appointment 

with them the next week.

I retrieved my second wallet from my left cheek pocket,

a small leather one that holds my gas credit cards

and my little black address/phone book. I placed

the open wallet on the roof of our silver hybrid Camry,

while I struggled to figure out how to use my wife’s

new iPhone so that I could call my people.

Finished but still cranky with the heat

and my ignorance of new technology,

I slipped the address book into a shirt pocket

on my red cowboy shirt, snapping the flap

over it as I got into the vehicle while still fussing

and off down the freeway we sped.

A couple air-conditioned hours later

as we approached San Antonio,

I patted my shirt pocket

and the terrible realization that I did not have

my second wallet thumped me on top of the head.

God damn son of a bitch! 

I roared, pounding my fists

on the innocent Toyota dash.

My wife exited the freeway

as I excitedly explained that I had lost

or left my wallet, probably by leaving it

on the roof of the car back at Ft. Stockton.

I embraced full self-deprecation,

giving myself four Bozo awards,

expounding on the virtues of aging,

while also lamenting the loss

of the three crisp hundred dollar bills

in the wallet as hideout cash,

as my sweet wife pulled out

her iPad and iPhone and began

the arduous task of looking up and then contacting 

the five gas card companies

so that we could cancel those lost cards.

We had managed to cancel two of them

when the cell phone rang. 

It was my youngest daughter

who was house-sitting for us.

“I just received a strange phone call,” she said,”from a Joe Taylor who lives in  Wimberly, Texas. He said that he had found your wallet at a rest stop, then looked up your name on Google, since none of the cards had ID beyond your name, then called here to leave a message that you should call him at his office tomorrow after 9 a.m. His business is called “Touched By An Angel”.”

I just burst into copious tears of gratitude,

being a living witness to the unassailable fact

that yes, angels do walk among us.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets

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Oestrus

painting by john shannon

Oestrus

In a thatch of sleeping thistles,

standing ankle deep in clover

near the swollen swirl of the stream,

I glanced over at your cabin,

perched there on stilts

with its high porch,

like a tall brown heron

that saluted the mossy sun setting

behind the thick slippery limbs

of the mother of maples.

In the half light I could see

a silver glint off the chromatic curves

of your proud metal chimney,

towering like a stack on a sturdy ship,

blemished by that trickle of creosote

that dripped down teasingly into

the black flaming barrel

of your homemade wood stove.

Standing there quietly in the almost dark

I swear I could smell your sweetness,

granting majesty to the moment

as I marveled at how compatible

we seemed that summer,

side by side in the naked scotch broom.

What a joyous and rare August’s eve

we had shared the night before,

tumbling slow on the heels of humidity,

warm and sticky--with you nearly

invisible in the gathering ink

as I held your voluptuousness tightly,

struggling to see one of your slender fingers

pointing to a Greek goddess

in a clear constellation that seemed

to shine just for us.

In the darkness, pressing your breasts

against my chest, my thoughts reeled

like flirtatious fireworks, absolutely

certain that finally my wandering had ended,

that I no longer needed to spread

loneliness around my shoulders

like a prayer shawl, because

I was not lost, no,

I had found refuge, sanctuary, there

in that wet meadow on the edge

of the national forest, and 

I had found something else

within my self, 

first a hidden door,

then a hidden room 

somewhere in a secret fold of my soul,

where before nothing had ever penetrated,

no phantom footprint,

no phantom breath. 

Glenn Buttkus

September 2012

Posted over on dVerse Poets MTB

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Punked

image borrowed from bing.

Punked

Are we 

so desensitized 

by the plethora 

of make-believe violence

on our Xboxes, 

in action films,

in our modern art--

so much so

that we fully expect

to become victims

in a country

with the highest murder rate

in the world,

where nine year old

punks with Glocks

rule the streets

and our minds?

Glenn Buttkus

September 2012

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Deus Vult

image borrowed from bing

Deus Vult

Today, this minute, we are faced with a Middle East 

once again ablaze with religious fervor, 

and democracy is but a pale rider

among the desert warriors.

The blood threads of holy rivalry spread virally 

like a catastrophic pandemic throughout history

like horribly hemorrhaging capillaries, 

with each side feeling threatened

by their opposite zealot,

God making a dizzying attempt to ride

the war horses on both battle lines,

jihad 

in one holy hand and

Deus vult

in the other;

as the atrocities mount up like Dachau data,

Islam,

the fearsome lions of the Sahara

versus

Christianity,

the self-righteous winged Crusaders,

angry fists clenched,

pure panic reigning

as histrionic scholars cite Pope Gregory VII

who piously sanctified the use of force

in the service of Christ Almighty,

and Muslim multitudes stoke the ecclesiastical rivalry

with violent protests against some stupid film

that somehow offends their holy prophet

Muhammad. 

Much of this began in 1099 when a rag-tag

starving army of Crusaders besieged

Jerusalem, the holiest of cities,

in response to Christians being cut off by caliphs

from visiting the holy sites, as Jews and Muslims

fought together to defend their city from the

crazed yet dedicated berserkers at the gates,

who miraculously overwhelmed them

and began massacring everyone,

burning torahs and the koran everywhere,

before hideously pillaging the great city,

wringing treasure from their coffers,

resorting to murder, rape, even cannibalism

before it was over, reduced to historic inevitability

and centuries of papal interpretation.

This is a conflict that has festered for a thousand years,

and it probably cannot be logically resolved,

seamlessly assimilated, or democracised

into some form of queasy hybrid

or unstable cranial hermaphrodite,

no, this remains a timeless titanic tussle

of powerful prophets, of crazed combatants 

whose diverse world views clash bloody,

and praise Allah sweet Jesus,

we can barely believe the current chaos

that runs rabidly through our headlines,

across our big screens, as we close in

on a particular presidential choice

that will seal our immediate fate.

Glenn Buttkus

September 2012

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Cool

image borrowed from bing

Cool

You know the first time

one encounters something or someone,

that initial impression may not be

accurate,

             essential,

                         mercurial,

                                      relevant or

                                                    magical;

like that pretty girl who challenged

your lame pick-up patter, who first

intimidated you before fascination

kicked in;

or that French art film that baffled you

in 1965, only to thrill you completely

in 2002;

or that trestle bridge that seemed so immense,

                                                                      regal,

                                                              towering,

                                                           imposing

when you were ten years old, but shrank

to insignificance the day you received

your AARP identification card--

and certainly the romantic unrealistic notion

that one can fall in love at first glance with

a blond cheerleader in a short skirt,

the verdant foothills below Mt. Rainier,

a 1968 Chevrolet SS Impala convertible

with a 396, factory 4-speed and dual glass packs,

the Space Needle,

Georgia O’Keefe’s paintings,

Frank Frazetta’s fabulous pulp covers,

is every bit as valid 

for each of us 

as the converse,

so I guess

that is probably why 

poetry was invented,

to explicate, illuminate, feature

the cognitive dissonance

that enriches and colors our days. 

Glenn Buttkus

September 2012

           

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