Five Lunes Deep

all images by glenn buttkus

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

Posted over on dVerse Poets MTB/FFA

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Phantasmagoria

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Phantasmagoria

“Life is the grimmest & the merriest motley of  phantasmagoria

that will appeal to the gravest or maddest brush ever brought

to palette.”--Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

For Harold Hare, the cities

                                  where made up

                                             of burrows;

and he never subscribed

                                  to the notion that some creatures,

                                  like sea horses, beavers, slugs & lady bugs,

                                  endorsed; a silly theory

that cities were made up of burroughs; absolute clap trap. 

In his harried world, fantasy

was not an illusion. Superman did wonderful

                  commercials for laser & spandex corporations.

                                Spiderman opened up a chain of

                                Exterminator Companies;

G.I. Joe & Sgt. Rock were WWA superstars. 

                  Miss Buffy was a bed bug,

                                & she was skilled as a dust mite slayer.

Commericial icon Flo was banned

from ever mentioning any kind of insurance again,

& she became allergic to bright red lipstick.

                   All cars could talk, could

                   hold intelligent conversations with road graders;

none of this Your door is ajar crap.

                   John Deere ran for political office

& now is the senior Senator from Iowa. Alligators in Florida

& Louisiana went on strike, & the Everglades

                                      were closed down & sold to Bill Gates

                     who turned it into a popular nudist colony. 

Red dragons were discovered,

                      living in exile in condo caves

                      within Mt. Olympus in WA state,

& CA petitioned that they be returned to the Redwood Ghettos,

a place, according to a dragon spokesssserpent,

                      “We would rather burn down to red stumps than

be forced to live in again.”

Batman is selling gentleman’s dress capes

                   in a new department store in Cleveland,

while Robin, now grown up & bitter, 

                   has shaved his head & turned 

                   to the dark side, becoming a leader in a Neo-Nazi

compound at Hayden Lake, ID. 

Captain America suddenly aged tremendously,

                   becoming 93 years old--something about

                                    his Comic-Con expiration date;

so Ted Turner, ever the humanitarian,

                                    hired Cap to be a

                                    military consultant for CNN. 

Air Bus is now manufacturing personal jet packs for commuters,

and has been testing them          in the busy skies of Liverpool,

                                    but there are nasty rumors

                       that drunken fliers have been buzzing innocent

                       pedestrians, & pouring state beer

                                    on baby buggies. 

Chickens, it has been reported, have resorted

                       to becoming prostitutes in Detroit,

& several Chicken Ranch Bordellos have become wildly

successful. Colonel Sanders has become a Pimp Daddy,

                       opening several Chicken Lingerie Shops, which

are now rivaling the infamous Sheep Lingerie Shops

                       in Montana.                  Glenn Beck has thrown his

considerable influence & support to the chickens, stating:

                               “There is nothing better than a threesome

                               with a pair of sexy Hen Whores.”

Yet another revival of the musical CATS

has been picketed by urban cats of all stripes, 

carrying small signs that read:

              Musical theater is demeaning to all felines.”

Fritz, the lead yowler of the punk group HAIRBALL HAREM,

is doing free concerts to raise funds for this effort. 

               Broadway producers have hired

               Lassie & Rin Tin Tin as lawyers,

& we all know this high-powered duo of litigators always

get their teeth into the posteriors of the opposition. 

Breaking News--Harold Hare is considering

putting together a luxurious line

of Lewis Carroll fashion jewelry, & he would welcome any

& all investors to step up ASAP.

Glenn Buttkus 

Posted over on dVerse Poets Poetics

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Primordial Paradelle

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Primordial Paradelle

“The primordial sea indefatigably repeats the same words,

& casts up the same astonished beings on the same seashore.”

--Albert Camus.

Have you ever spent the night in the forest alone?

          Have you ever spent the night in the forest alone?

The noises from the darkness can be frightful.

          The noises from the darkness can be frightful.

The night noises from the forest, alone in the darkness

          can have you be the frightful.

Staring into the flames of your campfire,

          Staring into the flames of your campfire,

You thump the blade of your skinning knife.

           You thump the blade of your skinning knife.

You thump, staring into the blade of your campfire,

            skinning the flames of your knife.

Finally, unable to sleep; restless and angry,

            Finally, unable to sleep; restless & angry,

You & your knife leap into the shadows.

            You & your knife leap into the shadows.

Angry & restless, unable to leap into sleep--

            finally you, the knife, & your shadows.

The darkness can be angry, & finally frightful.

You have spent the night alone, staring 

into the forest. The shadows, the noises 

leap into your campfire flames; restless, unable 

to sleep, you thump your knife blade--

ever the skinning knife.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets MTB

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Timothy Leary Is Dead

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Timothy Leary is Dead

“Think for yourselves, & always question authority.”

--Timothy Leary. 

It was 1968,

           San Diego, CA.       I was in the Navy, struggling

                                      to keep myself from being shipped

to Viet Nam.

Timothy Francis Leary was

coming to town;            a one night “Lecture Performance”

at a local theater. I felt that I had go to see him,

                                     this man that a few months later

President Nixon would call, The most dangerous man in America.

Leary,

a Harvard Psychologist & Professor,

                 used hallucinogenic drugs

                 like Lycergic Acid Diethylamide,

                       peyote/mescaline &

                       psilocylin mushrooms,

                 claiming that they all had therapeutic potentials

for incredible breakthroughs in Psychiatry.

“Turn on, tune in, & drop out.”

were the tagline on the posters downtown.

Leary, I thought could walk the walk,

having spent time behind bars in 29 different jails

as testament to his principles.

I had done my research on non-drug induced

                        states of consciousness;    meditation,

                                                                   trance,

                                                                   yoga,

                                                                   religious ecstasy,

                                                                   dreams &

                                                                   out-of-body experiences;

that to have a psychedelic experience, one needed

to understand that it was not the drug

                       that produced the transcendent event--

                       it merely was the key

that unlocked & opened the mind; freeing

                       the central nervous system

                                                       of its ordinary patterns.

Sure, when I arrived at the Theater,

                   I was offered those LSD sugar cubes,

                                         the dried magic mushrooms

                                         & the green chunks of peyote--

but I passed on all of them.

The place was packed, & the overwhelming

stench of unwashed hippy bodies

& marijuana smoke nearly choked me, spiced up

                    by two Buddhist monks in yellow robes

                    swinging their incense burners, while

three sitar players set the mood.

Leary entered to cheers,

walked regally to center stage

all dressed in Nehru-white,

and plopped down into the Lotus position,

                     which he maintained for two hours.

                     Ram Dass sat on his right, while

                     Allen Ginsberg sat on his left.

Between musical interludes, he spoke wonderfully

about metaphysical postulates, 

          scientific principles,

          Fascist politics & Life.             When at last he stood up,

                                      I leaped to my feet,

                                      fascinated, intrigued, entranced,

                                      ready to go AWOL,

                                      ready to drop out,

                                      ready to become a disciple.

But he turned & strolled off stage with his entourage 

not noticing me or my enthusiasm,

                                      my voice lost

                     in the middle of that great stoned throbbing throng.

He walked off stage into

the welcoming arms

of the the San Diego PD--

                & I had to reconstruct & reconfigure

                my soaring synapsis’ before

returning to NAS Miramar. 

               

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets Poetics

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Blackthorne--a 55

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Blackthorne--a 55

“From birth to age 18, a girl needs good parents;

from 18 to 35 she needs good looks;

from 35 to 55 she needs a good personality;

& after 55 she needs a lot of cash.”--Sophie Tucker.

Sheriff Hop

seems to be

a badass;

Deputy Marcus

appears to be

a prick;

Barber Barnes

is gut-shot--we

hope he’ll survive;

Rod Buck

is staring into the barrels

of his own weapons,

hands on his hips,

eyes defiant;

Storekeeper Wallace

is speaking up for Buck--

& we have yet

to meet his daughter.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted on over at dVerse Poets OLN

Archways

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Archways

“Why do you speak to me of stones? It is

only the arch that matters to me.”--Kublai Khan.

Castles will surely crumble, but their stony bones laugh

at Time’s attacks.

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

Twilight comes to Tacoma, where rich men’s yachts

are foreground for museums.

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

Union Station, once a terminus, now just

a federal hogan.

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

The window was an old skeleton, wearing new glass

as cloud mirror.

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

I found a pipeline being a bridge over oblivious waters.

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

An old Dodge logging truck can become sculpture,

left to the elements.

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

Water towers have just become hen’s-tooth scare

as covered bridges.

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

He was a forgotten king pretending to be

a young wayward prince.

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

A solitary shoe becomes a clue about a careless

missing child.

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

Some statues seem to be screaming silently:

seen but never heard.

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

You must realize that all silver clouds do not have

Rolls Royce on their undersides. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets MTB

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Concerto For Time Bandits

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Concerto For Time Bandits

“Old Time--his factory is a secret place, his work

is noiseless, & his hands are mute.”--Charles Dickens.

TIME: A non-spatial continuum in which events occur in

apparently irreversible succession from the past through

the present to the future.

The White Rabbit dashes about the Queen’s maze

                             staring at his large pocket watch:

                  I’m late, I’m late

                  for a very important date--

but like a gerbil spinning on his exercise wheel,

                             he went nowhere fast,           in a conflict

                             with inertia, caught forever

                             within the thorny parameters of the Now;

a prisoner,

a victim,                painfully aware that victory does not

                             always go to the swift--

just ask Tom Tortoise. 

Each of us squats comfortably

                              on our very own section of this planet,

                                                 trying valiantly to understand

                                                 hemispheres,

                                                 longitude,

                                                 latitude, & all those damned

Time Zones.          I reside in the Northwest, my wife is visiting

family in Texas, & as I write this she is two hours ahead of me,

                              while my oldest daughter in Maryland exists

three hours ahead--& so it goes traveling East  

                              ripping through zone after zone

traveling in an unbroken circle

                              until you bump into the butt of your own shadow,

arriving right back where you started; while some bush pilot

                              in Alaska struggles an hour behind me.

            When I traveled to Australia from California,

            dipping deep into the upside down reality of the Southern

            Hemisphere, speeding 8000 miles in 18 hours, I arrived

in Sydney the day before I left, & hey, when I returned, I arrived

            in LA 2 hours before I departed. 

Sometimes I find it to be fun to stop by a Clock Shop,
& stand in the actual moment

completely surrounded by thousands

of clicking, clanking, squeaking, whirring & twitching

springs & wheels housed in hundreds of time pieces--

                each a microcosm unto itself, a mechanical

miniature universe, inhabited by

                a vast population of dust mites, & while

our imagination has been focused so microscopically,

                 we take the opportunity to peer even further

                 within to a sub-atomic world

                 where a grain of sand

would appear to loom as large as Ayers Rock,

                 where Time stands still--

and that doesn’t even scratch the surface

                 of attempting to master or understand 

                            Time,

even while dropping into a whirlpool or worm hole,

                  folding back the edges of dimensional reality,

                  rocketing unimaginable distances

                                  while violating the laws of physics,

without even considering the metaphysical postulates

that beyond the Veil, Time does not,

                                           can not exist--

where Past, Present, & Future cohabit a linear continuum,

where

       the mysteries

                       of Life all

                                  become beautiful

                                                          pods of clarity.

So, what the hell time is it, you ask?

Well, you are standing in the pivotal center of it,

& it is later than you think,

& earlier than you would like it to be. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets Poetics

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