Review of 39 Poems

Article first published on Blogcritics.org as Book Review: 39 Poems by Charles Butler

39 POEMS by Charles J. Butler

ISBN 978-0-9772718-8-7

Publication date 2010

74 pages

No Shirt Press, Brooklyn, NY

Reading through the 39 Poems brought to mind Hitchcock’s movie, The 39 Steps because each poem stretches the reader and the page towards the next poem and set of steps without explaining where he is going. Also the poems on the pages of the book are laid out in emulation of climbing up and down steps so that while reading I felt like I was skipping steps. Each poem relates to life’s struggles; the various ways love affects us and how meaningful respect is. He writes about everyday things moving us up and down steps lyrically and emotionally.

Butler describes how one can be oblivious to a murder and walk across bloodstains on our big city streets without recognizing them in the book’s first poem, Crimson Stroll. Suddenly while stepping over the red brown stains, the author recognizes it for what it is, seeing a stark vivid beauty of someone’s life bled out on the streets.

Someone’s life bled out

At your feet

              Think on it

                             Times you bled

Times you made others bleed

            Look on it

            Big dark path on 8^th ave

            Brooklyn side

                                    in your way

look on it

the fuel that moves us all

dried out on a dirty sidewalk

who bled …

are they dead

                        look at it

a dark stain

                        it’s almost…

beautiful

            a bit of Canada                         flashes up your neck

and ears

back in the world you move around it

and move on

                        wishing for cold rain

to wash away the stain   human sin

most of all

                           your own

We’re all here – all human and suffering –  and this is the grist for this author to describe how we’re all the same and different at the same time, but he wants to show us that we have the capacity to be and do more that drives us and of course this is what drives this poet to create poetry. The stains our lives create must contain beauty otherwise why do we exist? Butler’s struggle is to align himself with the humanity in all of us, despite the murder the chaos, the beauty the differences between rich and poor, black and white, and he struggles with it all, climbing up and down, retreating and coming to terms with wrongs and rights and even the grays and imperfections.

The problem is that our climbing stretching and reaching is never done. You go up you descend and then you begin all over again because that’s the way life is, it’s never done until you’re done - or dead and gone - is more like it - or if you’re a quitter. Butler is no quitter and no matter how far down he’s gone – he bounces back to reexamine his roots and the course of his life, fighting to stay in touch with his spiritual side. This spiritual side is at the root of Butler’s talent, as he controls his anger hurt and humiliation when he’s experienced racism. For any of you who have never experienced racism, normal is a good place to start to understand what it’s about when you get stopped on the street because of the color of your skin.

                                    nature of the beast

now

            I’m not gonna say I’ve lost

count o’the many times I’ve been blackstopped

but

            it’s more than a few

remember

                        I’m 16

walkin’ on a bed-stuy street

goin’ noplace fast

            blue n’ white rolls up on me

unis pile out …

            nicely they ask me if I’m carryin’

a gun

            nicely I say no

nicely

            they  ask if I would submit

to a search

                        mind you             they don’t have

to ask me

                        a goddamn thing

and they know it

I know it

                        An’ the brother

watchin’ this

                                    who wishes right now

he was            

            someplace else

knows

            it

nicely

            I say

                        go ahead

I can relate to this struggle and suffering. All my life as a Jew and especially in my childhood I was called a Christ killer. The recent advent of the Mel Gibson movie and his ensuing drunk arrest and slurred comment about Jews brought it home to me again. But this is a tactic of the upper echelon. They want to keep us all at each other’s throats so we will keep our busy bee status and keep making the rich richer. It’s a means of control and humiliation and it makes us hurt. Mr. Butler knows this hurt intimately and writes about it poignantly.

           

39 Poems cover a range of experiences; awareness of the haves and have-nots, racism, love, hurt, abandonment and loss, and more importantly the urge to understand and come to terms with it and explain what it’s all about. After all this everyday stuff is the mesh of our lives. The ability to sublimate sets humans apart from other species, to take our hurts and pain and transcend them for the greater good – to create beauty in ugliness is the work Mr. Butler attends to.

In DMV rag, Butler speaks for all of us who have ever been to the DMV.

We’re in the dmv now

                        Hundreds of black

And brown faces

                        some whites

all of them wanna be someplace else

but here we are …

                                    it’s all mad

gotta be

            half the world is on fire            an’

the other is on line waiting for their number to be called

lookin’ for a place t’ sit

an empty seat

is like

            fool’s gold

Don’t we all feel like this when we visit official offices, public school registration, social security, Medicaid, even the closed down US passport passport bureaus, and welfare’s the worst. I have a poem about it called, “Welfare’s Still A Bitch!”

The searching and questioning never stop just like in the movie The 39 Steps, there is always another side to examine to analyze understand and conquer. His poems speak to maturity and growth and show how youth and mistakes although unavoidable are only part of climbing and descending those steps, a poem for each step.

In word one baby, Butler explains why a writer writes.

why 

write?

writing                         since he was eleven

thru                        good days

                                                and dark times

the pain of living

                                                the come hither call

of death

            and madness inbetween

even hung                        ‘em up for a time

didn’t last

why write?

he’s free

Is the author describing himself here or is he speaking for everyone? We all know writers write about what they know and well, … if they write about what they don’t know … everyone knows that doesn’t work. Artists from time immemorial have been known to describe angst which often spurs their creative urges. Does every writer experience angst? I can’t speak for every artist. Many writers have spoken and written about their angst yet angst alone doesn’t make a man an artist. There is some other indistinguishable indefinable something that inspires a writer to create, that makes his writings stand out among others, something that prods him to spend his time writing while others commune, have sex, watch tv or do other things while writing remains a lonely task which takes time.

Words don’t miraculously appear on the page. Writing is what gives Butler the freedom he speaks of above. His words create a freedom that exists nowhere else around in our world and he helps the reader to feel it too. Through that freedom we see what he sees; a stark world filled with fertility and barrenness that provides us not only with a place to survive but a place to grow and thrive. The growth in Butler’s poetry and words inspires me too. I recommend 39 Poems sincerely and without any reservation.

Cartier Street Review March 2011

Cartier Street Review March 2011

new bathroom ensues with issues

I like this combo, the blue glass floor tiles, they're 12 " X 12 " - each square glass is 1" X 1" and they are mounted on mesh. The box has special installation instructions. I found these at Home Depot for $8.97 apiece. They sure are pretty and this would make a pretty floor. Its name is Blue Lagoon by Daltile.

These blue ceramic tiles look nice for the wall - it's not the cheapest I could go but not the most expensive either, kind of a compromise between the two. I'd go with the large flat tiles in the middle below for the shower area and the rest of the walls will go halfway up with this same flat light blue below.

Then for the upper part of the wall to the ceiling I want to use the blue center ones like in the photo below. These tiles also come in 8 " X 24 " strips mounted on mesh too. These are not flat and come come up on each corner, nicely shaped. 

And then that pretty blue glass floor...



Whaddaya think?

marble living room table

marble living room table

hand painted night table /stand

hand painted night table /stand

We’re all in this together Hun

You’re all alone boo hoo
no family to speak of
Boo hoo poor you all alone
Probably wouldn’t want you for family neither
Who would want a crazy lunatic as family
Someone who always thinks with her heart not foreseeing consequences of what was clearly there to begin with even though she helps with all her circumspection and obligation, she’s doing some good out there, how can you not reject someone who always has your back, holds friendship above all, and she may say something you don’t want said if you don’t warn her first, she’s a big mouth but she’s also someone who loves the truth even if she’s easily deceived
Thank god she’s had good luck to survive
Hard to fathom:
You can always count on her help if you need it
weird how everyone takes you for granted thinks it’s your job to clean up their mess yet you’re compelled to keep doing it over and over again hard to fathom why your family doesn’t want you. Do you think it’s because you know too many secrets – things they pretend they’ve forgotten, so it doesn’t matter that they know you’d do whatever you had to do to help them do what they wanna do - short of committing crime getting caught and doing time for them
so tell me why are they are so mean bitter and hostile, why to you
Do you think you should suffer another rejection at their hands and you don’t know why but you do feel compelled to call them -
Why?
You think it’s because – they’re family – and you should …
Boo hoo poor you
Do you believe this shit
What? Please now you're saying you got no more time to sit and jive through this bullshit yet you keep doing the same things again and again
no luck with family society same roots different paths or if it's the same path they'll deny any relation to you
no time to sit here and worry you said got to be on your way
you’ve got so much to say and so many things to do you don’t know how much time is on your side
you’re so enthusiastically spring cleaning eliminating clutter or attempting to and then you get this urge to call and say it’s because they're family
lucky you lucky me
you’re so busy bee busy bee busy busy busy be me

Mammoth Bones & Contemporary Beef - Bernard Alain

Mammoth Bones & Contemporary Beef, a witty new chap that may be small but Alain's words wallop a strong punch that will knock you silly and leave you begging for more.

The editor in me kept looking for that one line that needed help. I finally gave in to his sparse economy of language which flows with an unconscious rhythm and wry dry humor. So dry it made me thirst for more, and I read the entire 36-page chap in one setting that went more quickly than I liked because I couldn't stop reading and laughing. I chewed as much meat from those mammoth bones as I dared!

Congrats Alain, you made a big hit with me - and … what? You thought I’d leave it at that because we used to edit the same mag? Gimme a break. I laughed so hard my eyes teared up and I cried. Not once but several times over a couple of hours. The honesty is over the top handed to us on a pedestal. The chapbook's cover with its mammoth creatures mimic the poems. They are bigger than life and than all of us together. Thank his mom, Anatholie Alain for that, for keeping the organic life form emerging from Alain’s third eye blind.

The hallucinations
have started
The pain more severe
disturbances of the
heart
…
sitting in a dory
out east
not giving a rat’s ass

Only a poet (and sometime even poets don’t) know how to lay out the work so true to form that it remains poetically true to its sparseness and economic wording. He references other poets to let us know he wonders if he matches up, makes the cut or has he been circumcised like most of us. He experiments with sounds and placements of vowels instinctually letting the poem find its own roots and meaning. He lets the poem decide where it needs to go,

The slow process of submission
The eventuality
Arriving at some maniacal correction
For the s’s

So obsessed he
Was possessed
…
who was he kidding

even Blake thought he might’ve liked the
devil

The words evolve to take us on a journey – a rampage inside ourselves where we explore to learn more about why we are who we are. Who else but writers would care where we are spiritually talent wise in life, and who but a writer would mix the two. The book sold out on Amazon but is available here.

I close the pages

of a newly read and cherished book knowing I’ll never return to it. A few words linger wistfully and repeat themselves to me over and over to make certain I don’t lose them. Indeed the words are like life; the pages pass faster and faster through time encompassing new and old worlds combined. I write words down words to make certain special ones don't get lost.

One word creates a new life a different strife, new strides, we learn new words or add definitions behave the same way or maybe a new way depending on who we want to be. Being ambitious, I learn circuitous new routes to change responses to a previously treasured keepsake or periodically purge and start anew.

After a while special feelings aren’t the same any more like a dying lusty love replaced by loyal love maybe or discarded like an overused garment or tired thought. The misplaced trust the stupid puppy dog crushes you can’t recover from all provoked and created through words processed in our brains.

The heat is coming up through the pipes, smelly strange odor. An old lady complains they don’t give enough heat. It’s too much but what’s the use of complaining? Just put on another bed jacket or robe.

No one’s listening again. Another Egypt’s on its way everywhere, started here civilization’s bed. Now there’s a new ruckus up there and it’s the same everywhere, right here in hometown USA. Same bullshit and taxes, fucked up welfare benefits everywhere. Now they’re trying to declare it unconstitutional to jail those who don’t buy obamacare. Damn a mother would buy it if she could unless she’s an addict and gave up. Give healthcare!

All about the money while we abuse the planet when everyone knows there’s better options. The people selling us gas electricity oil and gas – now we’re talking big money big political friends and if you’re in with their ways you gotta be in like Flynn unless if you’re crippled Roosevelt who did better than any recent shmuck except Johnson.

A rant could be a way outta here. Just a little more please for the poor and worthy, please, a little more for mothers and children, please a little more for us worker bees trying to stay strong straight and narrow for our children.

What’s wrong with me?

I only want to read about misery spite hate crime. I never wanted to read about rabbits talking to badgers. Why would I want to read about that since all I ever lived were crimes and passions, the wrong way to live.
That’s me! Always in the wrong place at the wrong time even born the wrong side of the track.
I’m always wrong. What’s wrong with me? Everything’s so god damned hard and for once why can’t I have it easy. Is it wrong to ask to expect for once in a fucking moon something good and unexpected - for something fortuitous to happen.
I guess that’s why I don’t want to read about happy bears. I hate fantasy creatures and animated films. I can’t relate to talking to happy bears or some other creatures. It’s lonely out here. What’s a sister got to do to help you understand her?
It’s hard out here. Maybe it’s hard out here for you too, down on your luck or things got you down or you’re tired of fighting about or for things that shouldn’t need fighting for. So am I when you get down to it.
But a sister’s gotta do what a sister’s gotta do to survive; you know what I mean.
A sister’s gotta survive never consider suicide it’s not an option
because a sister knows that there are others just like her who have been through more than her too. A sister has got to survive to show others it can be done and then teach them how to survive too. It doesn’t matter how much you hate this system you gotta learn to fight your way through it to survive. Even if you’re not in some perfect god damned family I once imagined existed before I turned my mind away from fantasy of nice stories about nice people and preferred to expose myself to books about mind mystery and crime.
Sister let me show you your way through this torrent of events, cause a sister’s gotta survive. Our children need raising. It would be worse without you there. God forbid my children grow up like I did. A child’s not meant to see all the things I saw by choice cause I’m a Buddhist or by coincidence, who knows? – All depends on your view of it, your belief system. You can win some but you can’t win them all.
A vivid memory captures me walking across Columbia’s campus in a driving icy winter rain with some crazy heavy set woman pushing a wagon full of books. She sat near me in class and one day invited me to a campus movie and I came so I felt the least I could do to repay her would be to walk her slow pace in that horrid rain.
“Where you headed,” she conversed, “to your next class or where?”
The wind whipped my face.
“I’m going to Lewisohn Hall like you are.”
“Oh,” she said, I’ve never seen you there before.”
“Likewise,” I replied. I’ve never seen you there before either.”
“So where are you going?”
“To drop off papers for financial aid.”
“What the fuck,” she said, “I’m a nurse and I gotta save my money and pay my way through here and I come here and then I’m paying for you too - you getting money to come here and I have to pay my own way.”
I opened my mouth but instead walked away. I pretended she didn’t exist though she was in my class. It was as though I had stuck her in a glass jar and covered the top with a net so she could breathe but not bother me. I could pay attention or not. She couldn't hurt me anymore. I was just glad I didn’t have to pretend to be her friend again and walk slow with her in another downpour.
Poor woman! What made her so hateful so unwilling to see -so hurtful? Didn’t she see that what happened to me can can happen to anyone?
Hmm, I guess she must have her own misery.
Don’t we all?

I taught I taw a puddy cat

humane society contest