Blackthorne--Scene 47

image borrowed from photoshopytutorials.com

Blackthorne

Cinemagenic Forty-Seven

Quest

“If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven

--the endeavor alone is honorable, whether successful or

not.”--E.O. Wilson.

1(medium close-up) At first he ran alone out across the prairie

vastness, until the blood & warpaint sweated off him.

2(sound cue) piano & french horns.

3(cut to pulling back to overhead drone shot, in slow motion)

the gray-black specter loping, his hooves flashing silently, with

a rooster tail of white puffs, like an equine dust devil, rising up

behind him; this grandiose dappled fury.

4(cut to medium close-up) the stallion was standing at rest, his

spotted sides heaving slightly, bobbing his head, his long silver

mane standing out from his muscular neck in the breeze. A 

seething vermilion sun was rising up, its molten head breaking free

into cerulean shadows beyond the low rolling hills in the distance.

5(sound cue) coronet--soft  blasts.

6(medium close-up) The stud staring off toward the right of the frame.

7(sound cue) six-string strumming over the rolling thunder of horse hooves.

--with the morning dew & the wind whispering along the badlands, he

could finally smell them--the strong scent of los mestenos, the wild ones.

8(cut to medium wide shot) a ragged herd of dun & black mustangs enter

the frame from the right.

9(close-up) the stallion’s eye.

10(sound cue) the stud’s strong whinny.

11(medium static shot) as the majestic horse bolted & galloped off toward

the herd, his unshod hooves kicking up clods as he lunged. 

1(sound cue) saxophone low notes, harmonica & snare drums.

2(medium two-shot) Buck & the Eagle sitting atop their steeds, 

the Red & Jesus.

3(cut to medium close-up)

--Johnny: Do you see him? Sonofabitch--do you see that giant spotted

stallion?”--pointing down to the herd of horses on the flats below them.

4(two-shot) angle on Buck: An Appaloosa for sure. I had heard that some

stud renegades had run off from the Nez Pierce, but I’ve never seen one

this far east before. Damn, he’s a real vision!

5(angle on Johnny) over Buck’s shoulder:

--He is a medicine horse--a real buffalo hunter like you, a spotted monster

over those ponies! He’s just your size too. He’ll bring good luck. I can already

see many spotted colts among the new herd at your rancho.

Let’s go catch him!

6(sound cue) Indian seed rattle, trumpet & drum roll.

7(cut to medium wide shot) the two men unraveled their lariats

& nudged their steeds with their anxious knees. The two stallions

caught the scent of the mares below, & their flanks quivered.

8(cut to overhead drone shot) watching the two riders galloping

down the hill toward the herd of broncos-with Johnny in the lead.

The herd immediately came to life & began running out of the frame.

9(sound cue) piano, guitar & hooves.

10( cut to traveling vehicle tracking shot) the barrel-chested Appaloosa

ran at point, the vertex of the mustang living spearhead, quickly out-

distancing the others with huge leaps.

11(cut to wide overhead drone shot) for a time they all ran along

together, pounding along the prairie’s spine, flat out of the grass

into the sand, then into the cracked hard mud on the salt flats.

12(cut back to the traveling vehicle tracking shot) at first in slow

motion. Now there is just the three of them, the terrible trio of red,

silver & spotted studs, all their tails high, their dozen hooves tearing

at the salt.

13(cut to reverse traveling shot) close behind them, but from a slightly

higher perspective so that we can see the Appaloosa beginning to pull

away from them. Soon the pursuing strawberry & silver stallions begin

to feel the strain of their riders.

14(sound cue) blues guitar slide over tack creaking, horses breathing

hard & staccato hooves pummeling the ground.

15(medium close up) Buck & the Eagle leaning forward almost on the

necks of their horses.

16(tighter close up) in slow motion; the horse’s eyes bulging, the men’s

chins clamped, red & white withers lathering up.

17(overhead drone medium wide shot) the spotted stallion begins to

lengthen his lead.

18(cut back to vehicle tracking shot) this time in front of them, with the

Appaloosa moving closer to the lens, inching toward the center of the

frame. A marbled apparition berserk-galloping, his stride never slacking,

his strong legs never tiring--like he had heat lightning in his hooves &

invisible wings, his wide hooves barely touching the ground.

19(sound cue) drum solo over guitar licks.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets Pub OLN

Sister Wife

image from themuslimtimes.org

Sister Wife

“Polygamy is a blessing, not an adversity.”

--Warren Jeffs.

My name is Kathryn. I turn 13 in November. My family, my  heritage

is Mormon. I won’t start higher education until next year. I am so 

pleased that I began to menstruate last year, & that I have large breasts 

for my age. I am an attractive redhead with sparkling green eyes. I do

well with my studies, & have been tested, revealing a high IQ.

My parents have decided, blessings be unto them, that I will soon marry

Craig Knowles, the spiritual Father of our sect. He is 53 years old, &

only has six other wives. The youngest was 12 when she joined the

bonding of his family. It is no secret that He has had his eye on me

since I was 11. 

I live on a beautiful 400 acre farm outside of Gunlock, Utah, near the

stunning red canyons in the south. St. George is the largest city close

to us. Craig, & his followers, who consider themselves Mormon

Fundamentalists, banded together & bought this land, which is now 

our holy sanctuary.

Craig was excommunicated by the LDS hierarchy more than 20 years

ago. He was righteous & zealous about his faith, & extolled the virtues

of polygamy within his temple, citing that Joseph Smith had 15 wives,

& Brigham Young had over 50 wives. Craig rejected the church’s

official discontinuation of polygamy in 1890, saying it was a hypocritical

smoke screen that allowed Utah to become a state.

I am home schooled, & I have studied our canonized LDS scripture.

My mother made sure that I paid special attention to Doctrine and

Covenant, Section 132, which helped me immensely to understand

& accept my sainted role in the life of our Elect community.

I am not ignorant or coerced. I know that most outsiders frown on

polygamy, are judgmental & ill-informed regarding its positive values.

I feel doubly blessed to have been hand-picked by Craig, our Spiritual

Father. My six future sister wives are already preparing me for the

wedding night & my future obligations. I will become pregnant as soon

as possible, & my love child will join Craig’s fourteen children, helping

to sustain our community & our beliefs. I am happy to be a part of the

more than 30,000 other fundamentalists who openly practice polygamy.

To be a sister

wife, is freedom blossoming

from mutual bliss.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets Pub Poetics

The Secret

image from glogster,com

The Secret

Minimalistic beings of who

indigenous people do plain understand:

--Minnie Shabalala.

The huge ceramic & colored rock 

abstract wall structure surrounding

the playground, pocked with portholes,

inlaid with bright tiles, is very aware

that from every portal, some child

or other can gleefully discover

the verdant secret garden.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on With Real Toads

For Kerry & her HS students;

Inspired by Minnie Shabalala

over at somewhere i have never traveled

The Truth

image from tumblr.com

The Truth

Time has seeped into

the cracks & crevices of

the once mighty Rome.

--Waseen Asmal.

Concrete flowers seem to gather

living lichen & mantles of moss

as their personal guests;

As do angels, sheep, bibles, & Celtic

crosses in ancient cemeteries;

where names fade under flora

and years lose their significance.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at With Real Toads

For Kerry & her HS students;

Inspired by Waseen Asmal--ROME

over at somewhere i have never traveled

Feathers of Stone

image from rootfun.net

Feathers of Stone

“I don’t want to be a cliche.”

--Cheron L’Estrange

Wrought iron, bronze, copper & aluminum,

as well as polished ceramic, pewter

& soft fragile soapstone birds

can never fly; but perhaps just

outside of the dimensional lines

their wings become rainbows

& they soar like joyful gulls.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at With Real Toads

For Kerry & her HS students;

Inspired by Cheron L'Strange--CLICHE

over at somewhere i have never traveled at  

Ascension

image from modiglianigallery.org

Ascension

It was not a beautiful death.

It is not by machinery but by faith:

--Niska Ramkhelawan.

The Savior’s Cross coveted the role

of being the holy graphite

in Jehovah's Great Pencil.

Just humble wood, yet became a holy

symbol; for the crucifix will forever 

 be the launching pad for

the Son of Man’s blast-off.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at With Real Toads

for Kerry & her HS students, 

inspired by Niska Ramkhelawan--FAREWELL

over at somewhere i have never traveled

Alice

image from slingsandarrowsofoutrageousfortune.com

Alice

Time will heal everything,

or at least that’s what they say;

--Niska Ramkhelawan

After the White Rabbit just

disappeared, Alice paused for

a moment staring into the darkness

of the lovely lepus lair, contemplating

Time, & challenging its authenticity

within this place & moment,

out of her body in mid-dream.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on With Real Toads

for Kerry & her HS students, inspired by Niska Ramkhelawan--YOU 

over at somewhere i have never traveled

The Kindred of Nebula

image from the guardian.com


The Kindred of Nebula

Adrift in the sky,

An everlasting beauty

Hindered by the breaking dawn

--Nsiki Gwala.

So much to 

struggle with as we stare

into a night sky,

on the desert,

     or in the mountains     

          where stars bloom so thick

                     that the darkness recedes

                          to make room for their brilliance,

          as the mechanism of our soul engine

     begins to thrump like a Viking horn,

thrilled & fueled by the universal

light show.

                       You say that the shining jewels of the heavens

                       are held up by tender titans, God’s squad of

       worker bees--who are sun-blind in daylight,

       can only see after Sol has tangoed below

                       the horizon, bringing day to that

                       other hemisphere.

                       You say that you do not believe in ghosts, & yet here

                       they are;                  planets & suns & satellites

                       long dead;               imploded, exploded, burned out

in spectacular fireworks a billion universes away,

because light itself, one of the fleetest things we

are aware of, is in fact so slow, so lethargic within

the godhead schematic, we find ourselves 

worshipping ghosts, celebrating the deceased.

We are but dust mites

on grains of salt

endeavoring

to fathom quantum physics,

just sentient carbon units

aspiring to soar way beyond

our minuscule galaxy

to reach out, to contact

other forms of life;

God’s other children--our cosmic cousins.

Yet, isn’t it ironic that it takes a humble Jesuit pope

to remind us of both our inherent humanity & our

manifest stupidity, scolding us for molesting the earth

& each other.

                          Astronomy is

                          Not new, but our perceptions

                          of the stars could be.

     

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on Real Toads

influenced by Kerry's high school student's poems, specifically Nsiki Gwala over at somewhere i have never traveled

Jisei as Jibe

image from buddhistchannel.tv

Jisei as Jibe

“Life & death are one, even as the river & the sea

are one.”--Khalil Gibran.

Kanshi

No one prepares for train wrecks,

when calamity runs amok;

As karma moves at breakneck

speeds when the Bullet jumps rails.

Can we learn to be a speck,

or recognize a portal,

Give up French as we leave Quebec?

Time to enter the Station.

Waka (Tanka)

Our loved ones have gone

on before us, & now they

gather in Bardo,

with smiles, open arms, bright faces--

as warm welcoming spirits.

Haiku

How lovely to know

my transition comes on

summer’s last sweet day.

image from teenink.com

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets Pub MTB

where Gayle asks us to write Japanese Death Poems.

Dancing Boys

image borrowed from thingsyoumissed.com

Dancing Boys

“Priests don’t like to say raped--they prefer misdeed, 

inappropriate touching, or a mistake. That is insulting.

I am not a mistake.”--Charles L. Bailey, Jr.

from THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS.

What does Michael Jackson

& Wal-Mart have in common? Little

boys underwear half off.

I saw a haunting piece on CNN this morning, all about how the

American military has to turn a blind eye to the Afghan generals,

politicians, & religious leaders who all have sex slave young boy

companions. One prominent general said, “It is the way of things.

 I could not compete with the others if I did not have a boy”. I must

submit that sometimes for Westerners, the heart makes the 

simplest things so damn complicated--how the reality of things

allows Afghan leaders to go all Kite Runner & shit & we are expected

to respond like a muzzled declawed grizzly or a lioness with 

belladonna in her eyes; so that bold child rape can be excused as

some kind of acceptable Muslim socialization, that we must not tamper

with the sick, perverted Afghan customs for fear that we might disrupt

our fragile relationships with the men in power? For Christ’s sake, two

American sergeants were booted out of the Army for assaulting an

Afghan officer who was bragging about having sex with his boy. Have we

all gone insane?

Personally, the sordid fact that there are Catholic cardinals & bishops

who keep harems of alter boys dampens my enthusiasm for the

lauded arrival of Pope Francis at the White House today. Can you

image Obama in the Lincoln Room saying, “Welcome to America,

Frankie. Tell me though, what are your views on pedophile priests--

did you ever bugger young boys on your way up?”  It throws a

sickening shade like shadow dancers, that nauseating image of

young Afghan boys shaking their pre-adolescent butts for those

old men, who in my book are hardly a cut above those who practice

bestiality with farm animals, chickens, & dogs.

When I look at my beautiful grandchildren & think about all those

child pornographers & twisted demented predators who want to have

sex with them, who tweet & text to our children, I cum every time I

look at those craved images of you”, I get a little crazy, wanting to

shoot eggs with guns, or personally perform the rites of castration

that will swell the ranks of eunuchs. I don’t care that this moral stigma 

has been with mankind throughout recorded history, damn it, we need

stand our ground on this issue--even though our intervention

will do about as much good as it does to complain of the

Muslim treatment of women.

The rape of young boys

is unacceptable, within the church

or any other society.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets Pub "Poetics"

Blackbird on Barbed Wire

image from seattletimes.com

Blackbird on Barbed Wire

Everybody knows the dice are loaded,

Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed,

Everybody knows the war is over,

Everybody knows the good guys lost.

--Leonard Cohen

My Japanese friends still remember when the Puyallup Fairgrounds

were taken over by the U.S.Army in 1941, & converted to a

Japanese-American relocation camp, with barbed wire & searchlights

replacing the carnival rides, food booths, barns, & garden halls. There

were no rodeos held there for five years. At its peak, the camp’s 30

acres housed over 7,000 detainees. I still think about it whenever I

attend the Fair. 

Back in 1900 it was just a County Valley Fair,

then for decades we just called it the Puyallup Fair;

now it has the title of Washington State Fair,

runs 17 days, & hosts over a million visitors--

becoming a glitzy throbbing star of fairs,

capping its midnight closures with 10 minutes of fireworks.

I really dislike huge crowds, so even though I make an annual trek

to the fair, even people watching becomes tedious when the crowds

are so thick you can’t see your feet. One year I went by myself, entering

as soon as the gates opened at 8:30 am. knowing full well that I would

be able to prowl about with my camera, wandering like a wraith, snapping

great images of sunlit carnival colors, empty booths of chance with their

huge stuffed animals hung like swinging meat, & at rest shining ferris wheels. 

My three daughters loved the place, as most children do; now they take

our grandchildren there to SillyVille to stand in lines for 30 minutes to

enjoy a 5 minute ride on the Whirling Teacups,

                                   The Great Wave,

                            Fancy decked-out ponies,

                      the Tiny Tot Railroad,

                 the Lil’ Coaster, &

             the bumper cars.

“If you don’t become the ocean, you’ll be seasick every day.”

--Leonard Cohen.

The adult thrill rides are legendary,       the tall classic wooden

                                                     Giant Coaster,

                                                 the Inverter,

                                       Kamikaze,

                                   Super Loops,

                                 the Wild Cat, like a sleek

                    bullet train, or if you can

stomach the spinning rides, just hop aboard

     the Matterhorn,

                   Star Ship,

                           Zero Gravity,

                                  Wave Swayer,

                                       the Enterprise,

                                              the Monster, or

                                                        the Spider. 

My personal favorite is the Extreme Scream,

a 200 foot vertical tower with

chain-driven rows of seats

that chug slowly to the top

before dropping 180 feet in

three seconds.

                   After the rides one has to troll the savory

                   smoky food booths, because the overpowering

                   smell of fresh hot scones, elephant ears, fry bread,

                   cotton candy, tacos, spicy BBQ & Earthquake Burgers

                   draws you as if you were a starving refugee. 

When night falls, after retrieving a jacket from the car, you skip along,

dance & jig to rodeo horns, calliope pipes, several canned Carnie

chanties, thrilling to the blending of screams of delight & barker’s

bellowing, & the colorful blinking of circus lights embedded on

everything like massive costume jewelry. 

Ring the bells that can still ring,

Forget your perfect offering,

There’s a crack in everything,

That’s how the light gets in--Leonard Cohen.

                                         

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on Imaginary Garden with Real Toads