image from pinterest.com
White Buck
“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple, and
pretty soon you have a dozen.”--John Steinbeck.
Alice
should never have
let her curiosity
be her guide,
She
knew it was
lethal for cats,
but
she was still curious
as to why
a white rabbit
carried
a watch.
So,
down the rabbit
hole she went,
never to be
the same again.
Glenn Buttkus
Quadrille
Posted over at d'Verse Poet's Pub
image from westernpulpcovers.com
Blackthorne
Cinemagenic 135
Stalking
“Be leery of silence. You may not be the winner. Often
people are just busy reloading their guns.”
--Shannon L. Alder.
1(sound cue) clarinet and banjo.
2(one-shot) Ryker lit his cigarette, took a couple of
puffs, and raised his fist as a signal.
3(overhead drone shot--medium wide) a tall lean
rider on a black horse led the others down.
4(close-up) Buck smiled sarcastically.
5(medium close-up) the rider in the lead was
Thor Bronson.
6(sound cue) snare drum and harmonica over the
wagon drivers Gee-hah, and little bells jingling
on the Percheron’s tack.
7(stationary shot) as Thor, the wagon, and two drag
riders, passed in procession.
8(cut to medium wide shot) as Thor and the others
reined up behind Ryker.
9(close up) Buck lying down in the tall grass, his
Sharps at his side.
10(sound cue) voices at a distance over harmonica.
Buck could not hear what they were saying, but he
could hear them talking. The lanky hand that was
driving the wagon, swung the two brown behemoths,
huge even at a hundred yards, with tufts of silver
over their fetlocks, around the stately maple and
pulled them up parallel to the line of stiff death,
the bodies of their compadres. The driver set the
brake, and jumped down, just as the two punchers
dismounted. For an awkward moment, they all stood
with their hands on their hips, grimacing as they eye-
balled the cadavers. Thor, still mounted, yelled
something, sawing the air with his left arm. The three
men immediately starting loading the bodies into the
lumber wagon. BRONSON TIMBER CO. was painted
on the sides. Buck could see that Thor wore a
bandage on his gun hand.
11(sound cue) piano.
12(close up) Buck pulled his red neck scarf up over
his nose; a stiff breeze brought the stench of sun-
warmed death up over the bluff.
13(close up) Buck held the front sight of his buffalo
rifle on Thor. At that distance it would have torn the
gunfighter’s head clean off his shoulders, creating
a Western version of the headless horseman myth.
14(one-shot) Ryker dismounted. He walked toward
the llow-roofed bunkhouse, striding in his irritatingly
relaxed manner, puffing on his brown cigarette.
15(cut to wide shot) As Ryker disappeared into the
red-washed bunkhouse, Thor got down off his black.
He walked the horse over to the west end of the
bunkhouse.
16(sound cue) snare drum brushing.
17(close-up) Buck held a bead on the back of Thor’s
head, steady as a rock.
18(close up) Thor was staring at the charcoaled
smoky remains of the barn, and at the shapeless
lumps of burned meat that had been two stallions.
19(close-up) Buck fought the urge to squeeze off a
shot, and put a fifty-caliber slug between Thor’s
ears, ripping his skull open and splatter his brains
all over the yard.
20(wide shot) Ryker emerged from the bunkhouse,
and stood by the doorway. Thor nodded consent, and
the old foreman, began tossing chunks of firewood
from a pile by the door, into the depths of the building.
He took a knee, and struck a stick match off his boot
heel, leaning in, cupping his hands around the infant
flame.
21(close up) Again, buck resisted the hot urge to let
the Sharps speak, to have the last word.
22(sound cue) blues guitar slide and harmonica
huffing, over a fire’s crackle.
23(wide shot) the bunkhouse exploded into flames.
That pesky breeze brought the smell of kerosene.
Ryker whipped his hat off, and slapped it against
his leg, jumping up and down like a baboon. Thor
had remounted, his back to Buck, ramrod stiff in the
saddles, savoring every lick of the flames. The
loading of the bodies was completed, and the three
wranglers strolled over to admire the fire.
Glenn Buttkus
Posted over at d'Verse Poet's Pub OLN
image from amazon.com
A Real Dick
“It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality
to go insane.”--Philip Kindred Dick.
Me: Ladies and Gents, today’s guest is author
Philip K. Dick.
Dick: Deceased author, don’t leave that out.
Me: How would you like for me to address you?
Dick: Address me, undress me, who gives a shit?
How about a Fucking Ambulance--that would be cool.
Me: How about Phil?
Dick: Yeah, sure, that or PK, or Big K, or the Dick, or
Cosmic Dick. When I was 21 I used pen names like
Richard Phillipps or Jack Dawson.
Me: Looking back on your life, do you have any regrets?
Dick: Sure, 53 years of them. When I died in 1982 of
multiple strokes, I’d already been married five times.
Me: I think Ernest Borgnine was married eight times.
Dick: Fuck Ernie, I was stoned for most of my life.
Me: Did this influence your work.
Dick: You know what they say, You can’t be a proper
writer without a touch of madness, can you?” Yeah,
I struggled with mental problems all of my days.
Me: Was this ever diagnosed?
Dick: I was told that I was crazier than a toothless blind
three-legged dog with blue balls and a useless boner.
Me: Robin Williams used to talk about that.
Dick: I loved him, but in the end he was a coward;
couldn’t hack the pain.
Me: Come on, you attempted suicide several times.
Dick: I never said I was a hero. I talked tough, but
I wore lace panties.
Me: I think your unique perspective made you a more
insightful and prophetic writer.
Dick: Fucking A.
Me: How do you feel about the Hollywood adaptations
of your work?
Dick: I died before BLADERUNNER came out, so I
never got to cash in on my new popularity.
Me: They filmed TOTAL RECALL (twice), THE MAN IN
THE HIGH CASTLE, MINORITY REPORT, THE
ADJUSTMENT BUREAU, and A SCANNER DARKLY.
Dick: Ain’t this a bitch? I was broke all my life. Writing
science-fiction for Ace hardly pays the rent. I was
never mainstream. I had to use my wives as patrons.
Me: I have always placed you high up in the
lexicon of Sci-Fi authors.
Dick: Fuck you, guys like Bradbury, Heinlein,
and Assimov made money. My dozens of
novels are considered pulp fiction.
Me: Uh-huh, it’s like poetry--you can be a great
poet but the pay is still shitty.
Dick: I wrote some poetry.
Me: Really, I’ve never read any.
Dick: That’s because I burned it. Robert Heinlein
was a mensch--he saved my ass several times.
Me: How did he do that?
Dick: He just called me up out of the blue, praising
my work. He was a real friend. He loaned me
money a couple of times. He was the best of us,
even though he was a Republican.
Me: I really dug the metaphysics in your EXEGESIS
series.
Dick: Yeah, me too--even though it was some flipped-
out shit.
Me: Well, thank you, Phil...this is all we have time for
today.
Dick: Wait a minute--this was it?
Me: Yes.
Dick: Christ Almighty, you are the real dick here.
Me: Probably.
Glenn Buttkus
The quote was from the film, QUILLS.
Posted over at d'Verse Poet's Pub
image from Wikipedia.com
Blood Moon Rising
“We are all like the bright Moon, but we do have our
darker side.”--Khalil Gibran.
There it is on a warm Spring night, near the end of
May; colossal, humongous, surreal. It is so bright,
that on such nights, I have walked in the woods
without a flashlight. Lunatics, poets, and bipolar
types act out during a blood moon. Werewolves
sprout fangs and claws, while vampires stay within
the shadows.Wild animals get skittish when night
becomes day, just as I felt in Louisiana when it
became very dark and silent at noon, while the car
radio blared a tornado warning; uneasy, off-kilter.
I’m not a selenophile, but as I understand it, the
moon is about one quarter the diameter of the
earth. In an odd celestial dance, it rotates as we
do, and it’s a bit shy about its backside, constantly
facing us, like a performer in a Greek mask. The
dark side is a place of legends and mysteries.
Between 1969-1972, America’s Apollo Program
landed twelve human beings on the lunar surface.
This pissed off the Russians and the Chinese so
much, no one has left a human bootprint in the moon
dust for 47 years. Many of us thought we would have
a colony on the moon by now. With all the bored
billionaires out there playing with their space toys,
I hope there will be men on the moon before 2044,
when I turn 100.
Wolves and simpletons
howl at the moon, while I just
toss it hot air kisses.
Glenn Buttkus
Haibun
Posted over at d'Verse Poet's Pub
"Trumpenstein" by Dave Pell.
Our Nightmares
“Our future should be carefree, living in the light,
not inhabiting a nightmare in the darkness of
the soul.”--Dave Pelzer.
With the media it seems,
its focus jumps around,
featuring death as laser beams,
and migraines that pound.
We gulp at the darkness
to get it down fast,
not using our smartness
as we did in the past.
We live in a nightmare
that the world must share,
with too many bad actors
and too many deadly factors.
Right here we’re over the hump,
still trying to get over Trump,
but he is a city cockroach,
and he feels beyond reproach.
Many of us got the vaccine,
as Trump did in secret,
but he’s too damn mean,
knowing now he can’t keep it,
the oval office and the power,
with more gold toilets in his tower.
He festers in Florida,
polishing his swastika,
like a very rotten tooth,
and stranger to the truth.
A wolf no longer at the door,
just a pile of vomit on the floor,
he’s still got that smell,
like brimstone in hell.
Glenn Buttkus
Posted over at d'Verse Poet's Pub MTB
image from pinterest.com
Blackthorne
Cinemagenic 134
Shaman
“Shape shifting requires the ability to transcend
your ego attachment; then you can slip in and out
of animal and deity forms.”--Zeena Schreck.
1(sound cue) loud buffalo hooves over snare drum.
2(medium one shot) Buck put down the big breech
loader and stood up calmly to face Tatanka--the
raging frost bull.
3(cut to overhead drone shot) The buffalo bearing
down on the hunter, as Buck stood his ground.
4( cut to behind Buck) as the bull charged.
Suddenly the great albino came to a halt, twenty
feet from Buck, catching its balance immediately,
a dust cloud settling around it.
5(sound cue) coronet and castanets.
6(two-shot) the huge hoar ox shook its shaggy head,
and settled to the ground, folding its thick legs
beneath it. Buck did the same, resting his fists on
his leather-clad knees. The bison switched its tail at
a squadron of horse flies, as it held Buck’s weary
blue eyes with its harsh red ones. An arrowhead still
embedded in its left shoulder, had a red feather
attached to it, and it flapped gently in the breeze.
7(sound cue) a cacophonous blast of a dozen
Sharps and Spencers.
8(close up) Buck’s eyes seeing, remembering...
9(insert scene--overhead shot) a buffalo slaughter,
the herd surrounded by hunters all firing at once.
Heavy bodies crashed to the ground. The Sea of
Hair flowed with blood and bleats.
10(sound cue) an eagle’s scree over a saxophone
squawk.
11(medium close up) Buck looked up as the eagle’s
shadow crossed his face. When he looked back at
the bison, he saw a Shaman, a Lakota medicine
man of the Buffalo Nation, sitting cross-legged,
wearing a white buffalo head dress. His face was
painted white, with a red swath across his eyes.
He wore a bison vest, his bare arms painted
white with red lighting painted on both of them
Buck nodded, and the nod was returned, their
eyes locked, their jaws set. Silence reigned.
Buck: No...I am not ready.
12(sound cue) the staccato of many horses.
13(two-shot) Buck and the Albino rose together.
They could hear the horses laboring along the
switchbacks below the ranch, about halfway up.
The great Bull, returned to itself, pawed at the
ground, backed up, glanced once to the north
and the approaching horses, once at Buck, and
charged off to the east, moving at a swift gallop
for a beast of its size, running toward the purple
mountains.
Buck waited until the flashing white hooves were
gone, thundering into cyan shadows.
14(tracking shot) Buck picked up the Sharps and
ran across the yard in huge strides, spinning up
soft clods of dirt, heading toward the flat bluff above
the burned barn, where El Blanco had materialized.
As he reached the top, he stood for a moment to
catch his breath. He could see his family plot a
hundred yards away, three gray tombstones boxed
in with its short picket fence, all white-wash in the
sun. Wait a minute--there’s someone standing over
there, an Indian. He blinked and the person was
gone. Christ, could it be Johnny?
Buck jumped into a thicket of tall scrub oak, and he
saw a rider come over the rise at the head of the
drive. The ground he knelt on was damp with dew.
He could smell huckleberries, wild chives, ferns,
black powder, burlap, and his own sweat. He parted
the brush in front of him, and peered out.
15(sound cue) harmonica and guitar.
16(wide shot) He could see them all clearly now.
There were four riders and one wagon, pulled by
twin Percherons. The point rider came down slowly
into the yard, while the others watched and waited.
The wrangler sat a horse well. He rode past the
eight bodies and the maple tree, and pulled up in
front of the bunkhouse. He was an older man, gray
stubble covering his face. He wore a long-barreled
Colt. He swung his left leg over the saddle horn,
and built himself a smoke. It was Bronson’s
foreman--Ryker.
Glenn Buttkus
Posted over at d'Verse Poet's Pub OLN
