Thursday, April 25, 2013

Conundrum Squared




image borrowed from bing


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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Thursday, April 18, 2013

Chaos Blossoming



image borrowed from bing


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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Thursday, April 11, 2013

Dragon's Embrace




image borrowed from Edwood 2011


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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Thursday, April 4, 2013

Ursus Pretentious



image borrowed from bing


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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