Cartier Street Review March 2011

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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 thru since he was eleven good days

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