Blackthorne--Scene Twenty-Eight

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Blackthorne

Cinemagenic Twenty-Eight

Release

“I told my children that when I die to release balloons

to celebrate that I graduated.”--Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.

1(medium wide shot) Wallace steps up alongside Buck--a comic

moment, for the shorter man could have bit into the red & green

brass cartridges across the taller man’s chest.

2 (2 shot) Wallace’s snowy eyebrows furrowed & crashed together.

He rubbed his dimpled freshly-shaven chin.

--You any relation to Bill Buck?

--Buck: I’m his son--(not looking at Wallace, his gaze into the cold

eyes of Joe Hop).

3(close-up) Hop: Who is Bill Buck?

4(cut to a wide shot) showing us the small crowd.

5(medium close-up) a stout man in a banker’s attire offered:

--He used to be the town drunk. He owned that sweet ranch out

in the foothills above Bronson’ s place.

6(sound cue) pioneer fiddle.

7(three-shot) A big farmer:

--The place has been deserted for years. Word is that Bronson

would like to get his hands on it, but there were some kind of

deed issues.

8(medium wide shot) a moment of silence while the sheriff considered

this new information.

9(sound cue) Spanish guitar & soft singing from the Cantina.

10(2-shot) Buck staring at the lawman.

11(close-up) Buck

--So, sheriff, am I under arrest, or not?

12(sound cue) snare drum.

13(close-up) Sheriff Hop--No, not at this time, Hoss, but stick around

town long enough for me to investigate this ruckus.

14(close-up) Buck: I was planning on it.

15(2-shot) Hop--I still have to look into that incident in the China Doll

too, Slick--so I would advise you to try real hard to stay out of trouble

for a few days.

--Buck: I never go looking for it--it just seems to jump up in front of me

whenever it pleases.

--Hop: Blackthorne is my town, & I don’t cotton to strangers much. So

keep in mind, it you cross me, I will cut you down.

16(sound cue) banjo riff.

17(close-up) Wallace, his face wrinkled with worry.

18(close-up) Buck, smiling slightly:

--Your town, you say? Funny, I heard it a little different.

Bronson seems to be the hairy bear around here.

19(close-up) Hop: I don’t give a ruptured coon’s ass how you

heard it, Mr. Buck (his voice turning cold) I wear the badge, &

I enforce respect for it. If you keep lipping off, I may just slam

your butt into jail for impeding my investigation. I will get to the

shit-bottom of all this, & I’m far from through with you; savvy?

20(sound cue) Indian snake rattle.

21(medium wide shot) The crowd is beginning to disperse.

22(medium close-up) Buck--Well, sheriff, you ride out to Antlered

Buck any time you want. I have come home, & I’ll be staying for

a piece. Am I free to go?

23(medium close-up) The sheriff slid the Thunderer snugly into the

tied down holster as a reply.

24 (close-up) Wallace smiling.

25(medium wide shot) the sheriff handed Buck his sawed-off, which

he slid into into it’s pop-snaps holster. Buck touched the brim of his

flat hat, took the Sharps from the tall deputy & pushed his way through

what was left of the crowd, heading across the street to the general

store with Wallace & the black dog at his heels.

26(sound cue) piano & pioneer fiddle.

Glenn Buttkus

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The Thespis Gene

Me as Macduff battling the giant Macbeth.

The Thespis Gene

“The highest form of wisdom is kindness.”

--Talmud quote.

It all started for me when I was ten,

watching movies way too often;

embarking on divers cinematic journeys,

preparing what became my inner thespian.

When alone, dropping to my adolescent knees,

imitating famous movie stars with ease,

teaching myself rhythm, beat, breath & enunciation;

for my naked ambition was far more than a tease.

Soon I mastered concise articulation,

beginning to hear that audible ovation

standing there at a life junction,

needing more than self-praise as my unction.

I stepped out onto the stage while in high school,

winning a silver cup as senior class Best Actor,

which I thought was pretty cool,

only to discover later I had been a fool. 

I pursued a fantasy career portraying odd characters,

doing it alone, without any sort of benefactor,

rushing toward epiphany following heartbreak;

I’d have been wiser to learn to drive a tractor.

For a decade I labored until my soul began to ache,

but a decent living I was never able to make,

as my ego was beaten daily to ground--

so I walked away still erect for my own sake. 

For it was not necessary for me to wear a crown,

because soon after my true self was happily found

as I became a compassionate teacher of the blind,

a healer--now that had authenticity in its very sound.

Glenn Buttkus

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Tahoma Prime

image by buttkus

Tahoma Prime

As a self-important Seattle brat during the 50’s,

I associated Tacoma with its aroma, 

the armpit of the South Sound; pulp mill paradise--

but after a dark decade living in LA, I couldn’t wait

to return to the NW; & finally did in 1985, but found

no solace, no warmth in the Emerald City.

So I turned my gaze south to Tacoma, a city then

in the midst of regeneration & renewal after nearly

becoming a graveyard, with old City Hall as its

headstone & Union Station as its foot-stone.

I developed new eyes, a bigger heart, a new vocation

here in the South Sound, putting down 30 years of roots.

This is a city known for the collapse of Galloping Gertie,

visited once by Rudyard Kipling who extolled its virtues,

a place where in 1885 hundreds of Chinese were evicted,

marched to the train station & sent to Portland, their homes

burned to the ground, a town where 9 year old George

Weyerhaeuser was kidnapped, ransomed, & returned,

a city that whelped Bing Crosby.

As a retiree, I now am free to prowl the corridors, corners,

& alleys of the City of Destiny, armed with a poet’s sensitivities

& a digital camera I document the wondrous street art, 

the state’s largest conglomerate of Art & History museums,

the underside of its bridges, searching for trolls & fire boats,

the new U of W extension campus,

the state’s first electric light rail service;

from the historic quadrangle beneath the clock tower,

below the Italian balconies of the abandoned Elk’s lodge,

beside the majestic Spanish Steps to the exquisite Victorian

homes on the north side, towering over the sparkling row

of fancy restaurants along the waterfront.

It is safer in Hilltop after dark now as fancy Condos sprout

out of the city’s fecund heart like gold-tinted mushrooms,

& we are known as the Gayest City in America;

oh yes, San Francisco has registered its complaints.

I embrace all of it, my Home, my Town. 

Seattle can go wallow in its own pomposity,

as I enjoy this place “where rails meet sails”.

Glenn Buttkus

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A Cappella is Music

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A Cappella is Music

“With a cappella groups, every voice is like one

string on the guitar.”--Ben Folds.

A cappella is music,

                 blank columns,

                 Muslim blankets.

To paraphrase the moon, 

you must activate the intrigue.

My a cappella is laboriously savage; anti-social.

                You are salvation on high,

                             the very foundation of the planet.

Furious loneliness lives       in tunnels;

                             my humanity was lost,

                                            parceled out;

but you are my lovely night,

                             & I entreat you to invade

                             my ponderance.

Partly sober, but vivacious, the forte

                             leaped into my arms; time now

to emerge into flesh

within my embrace.

Please accept the heat of my vengeance,

                              for you are the Love;

A cappella peeled naked,

                  the music is the elixir of life’s ferocity.

Oh, the verses of patricide!

Oh, the eyes of ascension!

Oh, your roses strewn in public!

Oh, your sweet letters so triumphant!

A cappella is my music, persistently

                           within your grace;

my words uttered only create

                           limited answers, leaving my soul

indecisive. 

Obscurity,

chaos, 

declarations,

eternal signs,

                           as you smile tirelessly,

                           as you relinquish it all

forever. 

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

Cuerpo de mujer

Cuerpo de mujer, blancas colinas, muslos blanco,

te pareces al mundo en tu activad del entraga.

Mi cuerpo de labriego salvaje te socava,

y hace saltar el hijo del fundo de la tierra.

Fui solo como un tunel. De mi huian los pajaros,

y en mi la noche entraba su invasion poderosa.

Para sobrevivirme le forje como un arma,

como una flecha en mi arco, como una piedra en

mi honda.

Pero cae la hora de la venganza, y le amo.

Cuerpo da piel, de musgo, da leche avida y firme.

Ah los vasos del pecho! Ah los ojos de ausencia!

Ah los rosas del pubis! Ah tu voz lenta y triste!

Cuerpo de mujer mia, persistine en tu gracia.

Mi sed, mi ansia sin limite, mi camino indeciso!

Oscuros caices don de le sed eterna signe,

y la fatiga signe, y el dolor infinito.

Pablo Neruda

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The Biggest Lie

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The Biggest Lie

“Roswell was real, & one day soon governmental & public skepticism

about UFOs will shift dramatically.” --Astronaut Gordon Cooper.

June 14, 1947

when I was three years

old, ranch foreman

William Brazel, working

on the Foster homestead reported

finding “some kind

of flying disc”

that had crashed on the

ranch, 30 miles

north of Roswell, NM; his son had found it first. On the fourth of July, they

returned to gather up debris from a 500 foot long gouging trench at the crash

site. He took a burlap bag of the space junk into Roswell, & turned it over
to the excited Sheriff Wilcox.

Roswell Daily Record

July 8, 1947

RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On

Ranch in Roswell Region

The sheriff called the Roswell Army Air Field, where Col. Tibbets had flown

the Enola Gay out of--on its fateful way to Hiroshima. The Air Force sent the

debris to another base at Ft. Worth, TX, & that’s when the fabricated story was

released about the crash simply being a weather balloon. The story was soon

buried, forgotten, until the 1980’s when it was reported that dozens of witnesses

were surfacing, no longer frightened of government threats if they talked, 

saying,“The debris was not made on this earth; it had super strength, yet was 

thin as tin foil. A suppressed report of another UFO crash in Socorro, NM, 

surfaced, that happened a few days after the one in Roswell. Former mortician, 

Glenn Dennis reported that he witnessed “three alien bodies, one of them still 

alive” at the base in Roswell.

In July 2007, I stood in the old Roswell UFO museum, in a converted movie 

theater downtown, pouring over a huge wall map that showed a red dotted line 

triangle drawn from Area 51, Edwards AFB, & the China Lake Naval Weapons 

Center; an area I was very acquainted with, having had my own UFO sighting 

there in 1982. An elderly man approached me, introducing himself as Glenn 

Dennis; we chuckled at having the same first name. He was part of the 

museum staff. We talked about my sighting, and he requested that I come into 

an anteroom, & recount my incident for the record, to be added to their 

archives; the room was huge & there were thousands of incident report 

folders & tapes on shelves I made my report, signed an affidavit, & I felt 

vindicated, elated, honored.

Everything fades in

the blistering SW sun, but

in the dog

days of summer,

people still see strange crafts

buzzing the night

skies over the

desert; such a common occurrence

these days, it

becomes a non-event;

but some of us know better,

some of us know

the truth. 

Glenn Buttkus

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Home From the Hill

painting by barbara humphreys

Home From the Hill

“Home is the sailor, home from the sea--& the hunter

home from the hill.”--Robert Louis Stevenson.

                          H  O  M  E:

A residency,

         a place where one lives,

                                    a dwelling,

                                             a hogan, teepee, or tent,

                                                            a crib, a shit hole, an abandoned

building, under a bridge, the mean streets, the planet, a warm place where          

                            a family unit can keep out of the storm,

                            an undiscovered country,

                            a dot on the landscape,

                            a red roof with two chimneys as seen

from some Google satellite;

                            A brick house next to, & rented from 

A Baptist church in Ballard.

                            

                           Another house in Greenwood, with

a grapeless arbor leading to dead grass in the backyard,

            with a low roof over the back porch,

            that I could walk out on from my bedroom window,

            & pick the ripest pears from the top of a majestic tree;

                            

A Victorian farm house in Coventry,

                                              when it was still country,

                            next to a large barn where I learned to play

                                               handball, with a wide creek crossing

                            the south end of the property, where we were

                            serenaded by a bullfrog chorus nightly,

& up on the hill, into a green belt, that tree house my little brother

& I built from saplings,

                     short fir & alder branches, pounded

                     together with huge nails we found in a rotting bag

in the barn, strung between four Douglas fir,

                     used thrice, then forgotten. 

       

                     Another farm house, this one rudimentary, near

Panther Lake, built up on stilts, with plenty of room beneath it

to pile our extra junk, 

                    where we actually had to use an outhouse,

                    summer & winter, & I had to chop the wood

for the two wood stoves, slicing into my foot once with a hatchet,

                    where my loving grandfather, who

                                     felt sorry for our pioneer plight,

                        came out for over a month, dug us a cesspool,

                        put in a septic tank,

and installed a real toilet on the back porch,

                        where we had to hang Army surplus wool blankets

                        that smelled like gun oil & stinky feet for privacy.

                        A large wood frame house right on a main street,

across from a park, one block from an elementary school,

rented from Delridge Auto Sales next door,

                       that had a three car garage, where

                       my Dad, trying to please my sister,

                       bought an old swayback mare, kept it in there,

                       so that we kids & our friends could ride it

up & down the alley until the neighbors complained &

one afternoon the cops came & spirited the nag away;

                       where at 12 years old I was given

                                  my first car; a 1939 Buick, and instructed

“to take it all apart, then put it back together again, so that I could

learn about such things.”--which I did, spending two months

                       creating big piles of doors, fenders, & engine parts;

                       but what I actually learned was that

I had no viable mechanical aptitude, & could not put it back together

                       again--disgusted, my Dad tossed all the parts onto

the naked rusted frame, & had it hauled away.

Ten elementary schools,

three Junior Highs,

two high schools--and although we never ran around in colorful

Romani wagons

              or lived in a storefront,

                                  gypsies we were;

so when I think about Home, it was not ever

                                  merely a structure, it was more a place

                                  where my heart resided--

for it became my own responsibility

to calm my restless spirit,

to put down roots,

to work for one employer more than twenty years,

to find the right person to share my life with,

to raise up three daughters,

to create a semblance of permanency,

               a place where grandchildren can visit,

               where old bones could find solace,

               where a heart could memorize lullabies. 

Glenn Buttkus

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Five Lunes Deep

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Five Lunes Deep

“3,5,3--my form is not syllable based. It is a

self-contained tercet.”--Jack Collom.

Some golden

dragons disguise themselves

as Hudsons.

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

A broken

cross actually masks

aching hearts.

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

Thomas lies

smiling at his

leaf embrace.

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

Ever notice

that some bridges

are abstract?

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

Zukeman bore

the cross for

two hours.

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

Glenn Buttkus

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