Thursday, August 31, 2017

Remember the Alamo



image from fineartamerica.com


Remember the Alamo 

“Just like the Alamo, somebody damned well
needed to come to their aid.”
Lyndon B. Johnson,

Put your empathy to the head of the line,
Raise your compassion above skyscrapers,
Aim your assistance to the Gulf, to the SW,
Yell hosannas well beyond state borders,
Follow your best instincts, your humanity,
Or let your heart be your compass & guide;
Rescue every man, woman, child, & pet, for
Texas is now hurricane-crippled--devastated;
Everyone needs to care, to reach out--
Xanadu will have to be rebuilt, taking years.
Angels must now all come out of hiding as

San Antonio rings its mission bells.


Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets Pub MTB

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Shoo-Fly Shuffle



image from vector4all.net


Shoo-Fly Shuffle

“I still have my feet on the ground--I just wear
better shoes.”--Oprah Winfrey.

Don’t know why,
but last night I had me
a whopper of a shoe dream;
shoes on parade,
but the fashion show
was all jabberwocky.

I’m telling you there were
horse flies wearing horse shoes,
weimaraners wearing winklepickers, 
all pointy-toed & rock starfish,
turncoats in turnshoes &
medieval topcoats, 
tan yachtsmen in mango toeshoes,
silver salamanders in steel-toed boots,
pygmy elephants in elevator shoes,
garden slugs wearing saddle shoes,
wharf rats in tiny ruby slippers.
young oxen in oxfords,
lazy lizards in mink loafers,
paunchy leprechauns in hairy pampooties,
red roosters in Russian boots,
jack rabbits in polished jack boots,
howling hyenas in high heels,
Mexican monkeys in mauve moccasins,
juniper bugs in jazz shoes,
and clown fish in Dori’s.

Footwear is diverse,
though barefooting is still fun

in fields of clover. 


Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets Pub

Monday, August 28, 2017

Bliss be a Lady



painting by Danny O'Connor


Bliss be a Lady

“Each of us could extract bliss from grief,
and knowledge from gloom.”
--Khalil Gibran.

There are certain
intangibles 
in this life--

perfect happiness,
pure love,
actual liberty,
perhaps truth;

but they remain
worthy goals--
bliss for a nano-second,
relative truth,
imperfect love,
truncated liberty,
accommodated guilt,
and good health--

extended
for as long
as they may

last.


Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets Pub Q44  

Thursday, August 24, 2017

Blackthorne--Scene 68


image from pinterest.com 


Blackthorne

Cinemagenic Sixty-Eight

Valor

“Valor is stability, not of legs & arms, but of
courage & the soul.”--Michel de Montaigne.

1(sound cue) trumpet, kettle drum, & seed rattle.
2(medium wide shot) there, about 60 yards from 
Buck, stood the ancient white bull, up on his 
unsteady feet, shaking his great shaggy head.
3(close up) red saliva mist pelted the air, his chest 
and jaw was saturated in steaming blood.
4(tight medium shot) He caught Buck’s scent again
and lurched toward him.
5(sound cue) blues guitar slide & French horn.
6(medium close-up) Buck snapped off a reflex shot,
aiming or the brute’s spine, but gut shot him too.
7(medium wide shot) the big bored Sharps knocked
the bull flat, its front legs first, skidding in the dust, 
then its hind quarters.
8(overhead drone shot) Buck getting to his feet, the
albino bull down, like it was in prayer--the lanky black
cow, oddly, did not move.
9(medium close up) the cow’s face was placid, its 
eyes strangely calm. The albino calf was shaking,
but it stood with its mother.
10(medium wide shot) Buck began walking slowly
toward the bison group.
11(sound cue) Voice Over--I know that all three bulls 
will have to be shot again, but for now they aren’t
going anywhere.
12(overhead drone shot) He dropped two more of
the cows, one with a brain shot, the other through
the heart.
13(sound cue) Again there is a blood-curdling bison
bellow to his right
14(medium close up) Buck swung the Sharps around.
15(close up) Buck, a lump in his throat, a look of
astonishment.
16(sound cue) strident piano chords & saxophone.
17(medium wide shot) The white bull was up again,
not forty feet from him, staggering slow, its head 
down, shaky, gasping for breath, foaming at the 
mouth, his pink eyes blood red, his steaming 
entrails hanging beneath him obscenely.
18(medium close up) Buck took a knee, and 
steadied the Sharps, as he snapped off a shot.
19(sound cue) the rifle’s report, as loud as a 
piece of field artillery, cracking like demons
screaming.
20(medium close up) It was a heart shot. The
bull pitched forward like someone had dropped 
a barn on him--but miraculously he would not die.
He lie there in a crushed broken heap, eyes 
open, watching the hunter.
21(overhead drone shot) the last two cows and a
ginger calf ran back toward the first fallen young 
bull, down on its front knees, its butt bobbing in a 
semicircle, trying to get up. Buck shot a leg out 
from under the lead cow. She went down, but 
seemed to bounce back up, her momentum had
been so great. He shot her once more, and she 
stayed down.
22(sound cue) rock guitar riffs & snare drum.
23(medium close up) Buck’s face, snarling like a
Viking berserker mid-battle. He swung his hot
barrel to the left in order to deal with the others.
24(medium wide shot) The remaining cows, the
ginger calf, and the younger albino calf, were
gathering speed, running like hell, low to the
ground, flat out.
25(sound cue) coronet & kettle drums & bison’s
thundering hooves.
26(two-shot) over Buck’s shoulder as he pulled 
down on the snow calf.
27(sound cue) Voice Over: Enough !!
28(medium close-up) Buck did not shoot. He
raised the hexagon barrel, blinked and the
bison disappeared.
29(wide shot) the flatness of the prairie, a dust
cloud floating to ground.


 Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets Pub OLN  



Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Beyond Borders


image from impactlab.net 


Beyond Borders

“A modern democracy is a tyranny whose
borders are undefined.”--Norman Mailer.

Walk anywhere in a straight line
until someone or something stops you,
reminding you that no one lives in a space
devoid of parameters.

As you ponder your limits, consider
the complexity of your cage;
        barrier or decor,
           emotional limits versus
                nether regions of redefined morality, like
           red ruffles on an apron,
        wood/plastic/metal edges
     pounded onto Art, or esoteric
stapled-on foreskins & scalps,
or that which constitutes a frame,
or the digital capture of pieces of
the horizon, or those twenty foot rusting girders that
                         stand at rigid attention, part of an
                      unfinished fence erected along
                 our Southern border, or armed
           guards holding sub-machine guns,
       or tall steel parallel fences that
have swirls of razor-sharp barbed
wire strung out like deadly dandelions
for the indifferent wind to blow through,
                                     to draw blood.
                                     to deter,
                                     to confine,
                                     to keep out
undesirables, trespassers, and all those
who might want to do us harm--

or even the unbalanced unhinged state of our
commander-in-chief that borders on madness,
ignorance and xenophobia--or the thin blue line
between us and criminals--or the ton of chrome
trim we used to decorate our vehicles with-or the
fragile membranes between good health and a
heart attack--those polished nails at the end of 
our digits--or the 21 overlapping dimensions 
that are reputed to exist within the space we think
we inhabit--or the humungous hedge we grow 
around our property to create privacy, and to
insulate us from the steady chaotic stream of
flesh & machines that parade past; specifically
the margin, edge, perimeter, frontier, boundary,
circumference, girth, height, weight, periphery,
rim and fringe of
everything.

We exist within our
borders, but do not need to

be defined by them.


Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets Pub

Monday, August 21, 2017

Gravel Sandwich


image from youramazingplaces.com 


Gravel Sandwich

“Every man is a damn fool for at least five
minutes every day.”--Elbert Hubbard.

My wife and I enjoy road trips in the summer. One
year we were quite ambitious, driving south down
into Montana, through Yellowstone Park, emerging 
east into Wyoming, stopping at Devil’s Tower, before
entering South Dakota; had fun in Deadwood, all
cramped up in its valley between mountains. Mt.
Rushmore was grand, remembering NORTH BY
NORTHWEST. Crazy Horse Memorial was bigger,
still a work in progress.

We made an arc north from Custer City so that we
could see the Badlands, where the topography is
gaunt and primordial, with twisty roads, slowing for
buffalo, sensing the spirits of Apaches & outlaws
around every corner. We stopped at a Trading Post.
My wife went inside to cool off & look at jewelry,
while I wrestled with our cooler & made a sandwich.
I placed the sandwich on the roof & pushed the cooler
back inside, just in time to see the sandwich falling 
past me, landing in the dirt. Two old men sitting on a 
bench in the shade laughed at me. Embarrassed, I 
picked up the sandwich, dusted it off & took a big bite 
out of it, biting hard into a piece of gravel & broke a 
tooth.

I walked past the hecklers, tossing the sandwich in the
garbage, and went inside to get my wife. I was angry 
& demanded we leave. I blamed her for leaving me out
in the heat to fend for myself. After she finished 
laughing at me, she said, “How old are you? You
should have known better than to bite into a gravel
sandwich !” Now this is one of our favorite road trip
tales to tell.

Moving slow around switch
backs in the Badlands, shaggy
bison rule the roads. 

  

Glenn Buttkus

Thursday, August 17, 2017

Love Me Hard


image from imgarcade.com


Love Me Hard

“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”
--Pablo Neruda.

In my youth, with discovered raging hormones,
love and lust were interchangeable, inseparable. 
So many exciting & sexy lovers on parade,
as Eros captivated & ruled every waking moment--

and only intensified in my smoldering slumber,
as I was often awakened to throbbing erections
and steaming wet dreams, prancing and dashing
about, fully stimulated, like a young stag in rut.

But then I began to consider serious relationships,
to confine my erotic focus on one woman, to seek
out more meaning, less haze, deeper commitment.

It took three marriages and forty chaotic years
of searching, stumbling, experimenting to finally

find the actual bona fide love of my life--my real wife.


Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Pets Pub  

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Ballad of Bathos


image from vinileshop.it


Ballad of Bathos

“I know you need your sleep now,
I know your life’s been hard,
But many men are falling
Where you promised to stand guard.”
--Leonard Cohen.

I know you pride yourself
as an outsider, a maverick,
never trapped on a shelf;
but your very best trick 

was to convince a lot of us
that you felt our pain,
that you understood our fuss,
that we all could ride on your train.

So here we are 6 months in,
with so many bodies under the bus,
with empty platitudes creating a din,
as America shops for a truss.

My God, sir--Nazis are marching,
and people are dying,
as you take refuge in your tower,
kiss golden toilets & stroke your power.

It is sad so many of us are already old
and will not live to actually see
your piggy mouth fill up with mold
as the country regains sweet liberty.



Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets Pub

Monday, August 14, 2017

Love Capture


image from pinterest.com


Love Capture 

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer.”
--Harriet Tubman.

As a poet.
I’m as much 
a dreamer,
as I am a witness
to the full spectrum
of my perceptions
of life,
the universe
and breaking news.

Love
is the common
denominator.

For my part.
I’d much prefer
to catch rainbows
rather than

klansmen.


Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets Pub Q44

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Shades


image from christimcguire.com


Shades 

“We may sit in the shade of a tree today because
someone planted that tree a long time ago.”
--Warren Buffett

Shade is made up of deep shadows,
a multiplicity of shadows
clinging to each other, overlapping,
pushing and shoving
in joyful play, 
in fellowship--
shades of boisterous bliss
that yearn to cool our sweaty brows.

A beautiful place for picnics,
                                 romance,
                                 contemplation,
                                 siestas,
                                 sanctuary & 
                                 meditation--

yet not all shadows
comprise or provide shade,
much like bees are insects
but not all insects are bees.

Shades often companion curtains, or stand in for 
them, or sometimes replace them. Pencil drawings 
are flat and one dimensional without shadings. 
Personalities would be shallow & colorless without 
diverse complex emotional shadings--even the sea
contains shades of change within its fathoms.

Shade is more than a
blanket as it spreads below 

the mighty maple.


Glenn Buttkus


Posted over at dVerse Poets Pub

Monday, August 7, 2017

Eyes of Fire


image from  rileybrad.wordpress.com


Eyes of Fire

“Only with a leaf, can I talk of the forest.”
--Visar Zhiti.

Too often, it seems to me, here in the north/south--
west, we seem to experience more summer wild-
fires than the folks on the east coast. Perhaps we
pay little attention to their news, or don’t receive
the reporting--but the fact remains that our grand
and sprawling spacious forests always seem to be
a lightning rod for fiery episodes.

Hardy firefighting smoke jumpers are truly some of
our bravest souls. Watching recycled old military
planes & stout double ended helicopters dumping
tons of reservoir water & huge clouds of blood red
fire retardant on exploding valleys, foothills and
screaming mountain sides is both fascinating and
terrifying.

Trees are essential
to sustain life; we must safe-

guard our sweet forests.


Glenn Buttkus

Thursday, August 3, 2017

Lessons


image from pinterest.com 


Lessons

“Learn as if you were going to live forever.”
--Mahatma Gandhi. 

Can anyone really be a poet
only writing in sumptuous free verse,
or can one be boring & not know it?

I used to think Walt Whitman was a god,
but sometimes I try a different form
to tighten my verbose style,

to insure my poetics aren’t lukewarm,
threadbare, shallow or shop-worn.
I say we should never stop learning,

from first poems in the beginning,
to successful forays into classic forms;
from poetic haze into those perfect storms

of words descending as our message pierces
all those readers very receptive hearts,

becoming targets for cupid’s loving darts.


Glenn Buttkus


Posted over at dVerse Poets Pub MTB

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Is This The End


image from coatingservices.biz


Is This The End?

“The killer awoke before dawn. He put his
boots on.”--Jim Morrison

I swear GOD is
   a politician; his explication and
         rebuttal to our accusation that he
               could not possibly love us as much as
         he claims--otherwise why do we 
   have to face death with every
breath--why in hell do unspeakably
tragic things happen regularly to
good people--you know, like concentration camps,
                                              bullies & batterers,
                                              genocide.
                                               patricide,
                                               dire hopeless poverty,
                                               serial killers,
                                               plagues,
and way too many assholes in charge of everything
--is that hey, man was given
free will & a road map from
the Get, and simply all those
who choose to disregard        morality,
                                               honesty,
                                               decency,
                                               equity,
                                               equality,
                         & the rule of divine law
                are just choosing to exercise
            their God-given right
        to be themselves in
the humane heart of an
extant Celestial Democracy;
dig it. 

The kicker, the egress from all this negative stress
is that a titanic ton of us choose to believe that yes,
all things wear out, so there will be an end to our
husk, but our essence joyfully shifts, skipping and
singing rap hosannas to our next adventure as 
easily as one travels through a revolving door. 

So, as this poem ends,
actually, the poetics only pause;
this pregnant portion of my poetic
continuum will be finished for now;
I tell myself that these words will find
closure, that my depleted creativity
will have to be recharged before the
next prompt, the next Muse’s call
for my response--that as a poet, my
words will live on, unstoppable, 
regardless of what may happen to me

--that is until Morrison’s naked Indian
spirit guide shows up in my dreams;
feathers tied to his phallus, wearing
blood red warpaint, and he walks right
up to me & says:

“Dude, don’t be stupid;
we both are aware that right

now--this is the end.”


Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets Pub