Ever the Dreamer

Ever the Dreamer

“I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions

to be realized, than a lord among those without dreams.”

--Kahlil Gibran.

Still that fresh-faced boy

on that windblown bluff

             above Puget Sound,

                        under a peeling madrona,

                                   staring out at Blake Island,

                                                                  dreaming

                                                  of becoming

                                             a writer,

                                      an actor,

                             a teacher;

a recipient of some kind of wonderful windfall,

                                                         gathering

                                                         enough wealth

                                                         to be able to live

on one of the grand islands in the Sound--

to build my dream-house

that had a deck with white railings

                                          and red bannisters,     

                                          part pirate ship,

                                          laden with colorful rigging

and two brass telescopes to star-watch with,

                                          redwood whiskey barrels

                                          made into raised gardens;

while rising out of the middle of the magical roof there

                                          would be a Stephen King

ten story tall writer’s tower, protruding phallic like

                                          a poet’s lighthouse

                                          where the muses could mass

                                          high above the pine & maple tops,

where I could witness sunrises over the Cascades          

                       & sunsets over the rugged Olympics.

                       A simple enough plan, just

                       become a successful rich Actor,

                       gaining a modicum of notoriety;

then happen to mention to my posse of agents,

Hey, did you know I have written a couple of novels,

& thousands of poems, & the words cry out to be shared ?

                      Perhaps we could publish some of this stuff,

                      make a pile of cash

                      and put our kids through college. 

Oh yes, my dreams were vivid,

like neon roadmaps,

& yet, as is too often the case,

like losing your virginity,

like turning 21, 30, 40, 50, 60,

the destination once arrived at,

the goals achieved (sort of),

never

     seems

         as grand

              as imagined

                    or anticipated,

                             because youth

                                  is blind to wisdom,

                                           deaf to sage advice.

                                   I became the Actor, 

                                            but a whirling decade

                                                  of Thespianism never led

                                                           to a plateau of success,

rather it just revealed the grit below the glitz,

the negative energy of daily rejection, like

drinking alcohol when dying of thirst,
it’s certainly wet, but it never slacks the need,

or nourishes the soul.

                                         So one onerous smog-ridden beaten-down

                                         day in the ghetto of Hollywood, I decided to

                                         embrace a hiatus, seek gainful employment;

                  & I’ll be damned if it didn’t come to me

                  easily, like colliding with a stranger on the

                  bus, staring at their face, & understanding

that you recognize them, knew them

from another life,

from another dream.

                  

                  It was time for MacDuff to fade,

                  for Benedick to become mute,

                  for Sancho Panza to let Quixote slip away,

                  for Adolphus Cusins to divorce Major Barbara,

                  for the cowpoke drifter to stable his silver spurs,

                  for the sailor to give away his fuck pitchers,

                  for the soldier to unload his weapons,

                  for the Commedia masks to be put away gently;

time for the teacher to make a difference

in the darkness, for the shadow poet to

continue to be a passionate scribe, for

the novelist to learn technical writing,

as the make-up, tights, & ruffled shirts

were put into the back of the wardrobe;

           as several dense decades gathered

           at my feet like a windblown Sunday

           newspaper, with the funnies & editorials

wrapping warmly around my thighs--

becoming emotional at my retirement

party as my former students & fellow 

employees saluted & roasted me,

filling me with a genuine sense

of fulfillment. 

As I launched my next ten year plan,

a wondrous wisp of a thing happened--

my dreams were rekindled, & every day

it seemed dreams became reality,

coming to ragged & beauteous fruition,

but energized, reborn, rejuvenated replacements

lined up

         like dream warriors

                           within me--

                                     in a never-ending

                                               spiral, twisting themselves

                                                         into a helix formation,

all with a child’s face,

wide-eyed,

pink-cheeked,

tousle-haired,

filled

with that old

sense of 

wonder. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets MTB

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Black Pearls

image by phyllis galembo

Black Pearls

“Tahiti is insular, full of peace & joy, but fully encompassed

by the horrors of life beyond its beaches. Push not off from

that isle, for thou canst never return.”--Herman Melville.

There is a wide wonderful archipelago

of 118 islands in the South Pacific--

referred to as French Polynesia.

Tahiti

is the largest island,

populated by Polynesians before Christ,

called it Otaherte.

In 1606 the Spanish called it Sagitaria.

In 1767 the English named it King George Island.

In 1772 the French called it New Cythera.

By the 1800’s it became known as Tahiti.

In 1788 the island was visited by the HMS Bounty.

In the 1820’s the English converted the natives

to Protestantism, introducing alcohol, firearms,

prostitution, venereal disease, & illness to them,

decimating the population, killing 60% of it. 

The French moved in with their Catholic missionaries

in tow, & for a bloody decade the new Catholics waged war

against the Protestants.

The French won, of course, proclaiming Tahiti

as an official colony of France. 

Gauguin resided there in the 1890’s. 

In 2007, I visited Tahiti for my firm,

on a quest to buy up some black pearls,

indigenous only to the Tuomota Islands

in French Polynesia.

I flew into the Capitol at Papeete,

& stayed in a hotel there, having to deal

with Chinese pearl dealers, finding out

that the Chinese were called

the “Jews of Tahiti”, being the

majority merchant class. 

French was the primary language there,

but plenty of English was spoken too. 

I loved hearing smatterings of the old Tahitian

language, the Reo Maohi, in the cafes,

bistros, & marketplaces.

They say that the island of Hawaii

in just 10 days gets more tourists

than Tahiti in a year, & that even

an average Las Vegas hotel has more rooms

available than in all 118 islands.

My last day there, my purchases concluded,

I wandered into the central park, & was

confronted with Gaston Temara, who stood

on a steamer trunk & gave political speeches.

He wore fake chains on his wrists,

& a ceremonial bag-mask on his face;

fierce & fascinating, he had led 

an unsuccessful bid for independence

the year before, but

his hardy black band of freedom fighters

was quickly put down by French troops

sent by President Jacques Chirac,

who claimed, after freeing the dissidents, 

that France did not believe that the majority

of Tahitians wanted independence.

Flying home to California, my company satchels

crammed with precious black pearl jewelry,

I could not get Temara out of my head.

Would something akin to liberty find a way

to flourish one day in Tahiti?

Something deeply American in me

truly hoped so. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets Poetics

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Stairwell Stanzas

image borrowed from bing

Stairwell Stanzas

“Breed not a savage dog, nor permit

a loose stairway.”--Talmud quote. 

She stared at

                 the

              street

                       but never

                                saw

                               what

                                      was there. 

                                              When a sprinkler

                                                                   bec

                                                                 omes

                                                                        abstract

                                                                                 art

                                                                                 all

                                                                                    the robins

                                                                                           begin

                                                                                                 to

                                                                                        become

                                                                                        art

                                                                                        critics.

 The seventeen 

               cables

                     got

                         busy perfecting

                                                a

                                            new

                                                  knot of metal

                                                              fellow

                                                                 ship.

                                                                      Rusted Fords

                                                                                     make

                                                                                         the

                                                                                             best homes

                                                                                                           for

                                                                                                          lots

                                                                                                   of angry

                                                                                                   hungry

                                                                                                   spiders.

                                                                                       Ah hell,

                                                                                 swing

                                                                               your bale

                                                                         up, Bob;

                                                                     there’s

                                                                  plenty of

                                                              space.

    Then we all went out & gobbled pizza,

                                                              the end.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets MTB

Today, Gay wants us to develop our own form of poetry; I call this Stairway 

Verse. It is superb descendant dissonance. 

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Keepsakes

image borrowed from bing

Keepsakes

“Poetry is a pack sack of invisible keepsakes.”

--Carl Sandburg.

Like a dog burying a hambone in the garden,

& then forgetting about it, as a species

we seem to all hoard, save, put aside

every sort of thing--somehow significant

for a moment, for a month--mementos,

souvenirs, impractical gifts, belly button lint,

string, shells, tin foil balls, crystals, driftwood.

Hanging on to the edge of a protruded brick

of our living room fireplace, on the left liberal

side, is my grandfather’s cane, made from

a shellacked bull’s penis, 3 feet in length;

opposite it on the right conservative side

hangs a plain wooden cane that my father-in-law

left behind during a visit fifteen years ago;

both passed on now, both remembered daily

by their dueling canes.

There is a hexagon candy jar

    full of small colored rocks

         that we kept bringing home

                after beach combing & hikes;

part

of a plan I once had

of polishing all

                   of them, and then

displaying them in a beautiful

hand-made wooden bowl

I would get somewhere--

                   but the jar is full,

sitting on a low shelf

in the basement,

alongside

              a clear plastic bag

                                     of perfect sand dollars

that nobody ever sees but me.

The crown jewel of nostalgia

is a small leather suitcase

that my grandfather gave me. 

It had once held his wonderful oil paints

& the brilliant smears of color all over it

make it look Pollock-dripped

or Matisse-dotted.

Inside it now are hundreds of letters.

For a busy decade during my twenties;

while in the Navy,

returning to college twice,

starting my career as an Actor,

then abandoning it for one as a teacher,

he and I

kept up a continuous stream of correspondence.

I kept all of his letters;

he was a wonderful writer,

having the knack

            of seeming just conversational.

Just before

                    he died,

                                  he told me

that he had kept all my letters too,

& that it might be a fun project

to combine them & correlate them.

After he passed away

leaving

a void none of us has ever recovered from,

I organized them,

his letter,

my response--

my letter,

his response;

the perfect memory box.

Years ago,

when I first started blogging,

I thought they were worth sharing,

so I typed up

       a couple of dozen

                of them, until

one day when the absurdity nymphs

stopped by & reminded me

that the world at large didn’t really care

about them as I did,

and besides,

it wasn’t any of their damn business, so

I closed the lid

on the treasured painter’s box,

folding the letters twenty score,

placing it on a high shelf

in the busy furnace room

          at head-height, so that

                      every time I pass by it

                               picking up toilet tissue,

paper towels, 

          feminine products, 

                         or Kleenix, 

we can exchange pleasantries

& knowing glances.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets Poetics

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21 Years

April 3, 1993

21 Years

“Love is the emblem of eternity, it confounds all notions of time,

effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end.”

--Germaine De Stael.

Just another Thursday morning,

waking up achey & stiff

with a pad of steel wool

in my dry mouth, my mind

still stuck partially in hypnogogic 

review, fast-forward/backward dream slides--

my mother in the kitchen, dead

over 40 years now, but there baking bread,

as the house hummed with family;

five grandchildren,

three daughters,

three strapping son-in-laws

puttering around, fixing things--

broken chairs, swollen doors, burned out

light switches, because they knew this

was all stuff I was incapable of doing,

having the mechanical aptitude of a fruit fly.

My grandfather arm wrestling

with my stepfather out on the tile-covered

table in the corner of our large deck,

both dead, both grunting as their

massive biceps knotted, & their dislike

for each other furrowed itself

into their sweaty foreheads--

two dead dogs,

three dead cats,

all there lying about

enjoying the company

& the day;

replaced by the tick of time

from the clock near my head,

accompanied by the empty basement symphony,

the oil furnace whoosh,

the big freezer wheeze,

the industrial sump-pump gurgle,

the utility sink drip,

the damn dog barking next door,

& the strident pleading 

of our Keezie Kat outside,

reminding me that it was time to feed him--

usually my sweet wife fed him, 

for she still had a job, had a routine,

but this morning she was on Spring Break,

& besides she was in Maryland

with our oldest daughter, hugging

two grandsons.

I called her cell phone as soon

as I could get my tongue to work,

& we had a mad singing duet/duel:

Happy Anniversary,

Happy Anniversary,

Happy 21st Anniversary to you!!!

Later I was on Facebook,

on her page, & I read the tender declaration,

praising her old husband for loving her enough

to send her clear across the country to be with

the furthest extremities of our clan.

Oh sure, I thought,

I’m a real prince;

just staying at home

writing more poetry,

reading the new script

of the play I will be in soon,

cat-sitting, feeling footloose,

buying a new set of radials

for my SUV as an anniversary gift;

and after polishing off another Jimmy Dean

breakfast bowl for one, I clicked open

my digital album & reviewed

some of our other anniversary memories,

the week on the big island of Hawaii,

the few days at the Oregon shores,

the freezing room at that strange B&B

near Mt. Rainier, smiling

at the memory of all the God-awful meals

we had in crappy restaurants while 

heralding our special day, all the lumpy

beds we slept in at hotels & motels,

all those road trips, plane flights, & adventures

we embarked on in the name of our nuptials,

now representing more than two decades

of mostly harmonious matrimony;

marveling at how well 

I was dealing with my solitude,

not really alone,

never alone again,

for her spirit, her essence

surrounded me, & even the old tomcat

seemed to know that 

she would be winging home

soon. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets MTB

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Ursus Americanus

image borrowed from bing

Ursus Americanus

“Whatever happens to the beast, also happens

to the man--all things are connected.”

--Chief Seattle.

When I was ten, I watched my grandfather

skinning out a large black bear. He had shot it

along the Carbon River, near Mt. Rainier,

in the forested foothills of the Cascades. 

It was a big Brownie, probably ran 350 pounds--

it had attacked him while they were both salmon-

fishing. He killed it with five blasts of the .357 Magnum

pistol he always wore while out in the woods. He had

killed bear before, but he often feared that one day

regardless of its wounds, he would meet the bruin

that might have the spirit to keep coming,

and take his life, the pair of them 

dancing with death.

“Never shoot them in the head, it won’t stop them.

If you can get them to stand up on their hind legs,

you shoot them just above the peter, & break

their pelvis, & while they are dragging around

their back legs, you can just walk right up to it,

look him in the eye, & finish the job.”

Working with the carcass in his backyard,

he had removed the head, & as it hung there

on three stout timbers, it looked like a crucified

thief, Barabbas reborn, or like Dan, our

Norwegian mailman; so human-like

it stunned me.

My Pop was a devout Evolutionist, 

& he believed that Bear were a distant relative

to man; it had sweet meat, like pork,

like man himself according to cannibals--

that at some point it just branched off

from great apes, & joined the pack

of Caniforms, letting its snout elongate,

& developing sharp non-retractible claws.

“I call this big guy, Bjorn; notice his cinnamon 

blond color, just like a handsome Swede. I’m

going to make a vest & some house slippers

out of his hide, and a spirit necklace out of

his claws.

He talked about the Native Americans

who worshipped the Bear Totem, respecting

its free spirit, with its definite element of

unpredictability, capable of moving from

berry-eater & fish-catcher to raging warrior

at the drop of a pine cone. 

“Remember, Butch, they look clumsy, but

they can run up to 30 mph, & they climb trees

a hell of a lot faster than you can.”

He told me about hunting Polar bear, Kodiaks,

& grizzlies in Alaska: “I once witnessed

a 1500 pound polar bear attacking a float plane;

tore that plane into corn flakes.”

He always amazed me with his outdoorsman

expertise: “They don’t really hibernate, you know,

they just find a cave & chill out for a couple months,

what they call their “winter sleep”--but they rouse

themselves to crap or piss, or eat some of their

stored up food. So don’t enter a bear’s den during

winter just for the thrill of it, because it will notice,

& it will fuck up your holiday plans.”

In history class I had read about how the Romans

loved to pit bear against lions, gorillas, & even

elephants; how most of the time the bear

were the victors.

“In the wild there is only one predator capable of preying

on adult bear--a tiger; but its real enemy is us, man;

cutting down their habitat, building tract houses

& ugly strip malls, reducing the proud bear clan

to garbage foragers, & pet-killers.

It’s a damn shame.”

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets Poetics

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