Salvatore Amico M. Buttaci has been writing since childhood. His first published work was an article entitled "Presidential Timber" that appeared in the Sunday New York News when he was sixteen.

Sal Buttaci was graduated from Seton Hall University with a B.A. in Communication Arts. His major was drama, and he has written and directed several full-length plays for educational theater.

In 1981, he earned an M.B.A. in marketing from Rutgers Graduate School of Management. For twelve years he was a marketing executive for a direct marketing firm in New York City. He then returned to teaching English to 7th and 8th grade students in a local Catholic school. Currently he teaches writing and reading at Thomas Jefferson Middle School in Garfield, New Jersey. He also teaches writing courses part-time at Bergen Community College.

>From 1974 to 1988, he was the Editor of New Worlds Unlimited, an annual poetry anthology that showcased the poems of aspiring and professional poets from here and abroad. Many of his own poems, short stories, and articles have been published widely. Buttaci has been published in such publications as The Writer, Inscriptions, Plainsongs, Poet Magazine, Opus, Cat Fancy, Cats Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, PoetryMagazine.com, The Manhattanite, Super Poetry Highway, and many others, as well as publications in Italy and Canada. He has won
numerous awards for his work.

Buttaci is the author of several books, the most recent two books available on Internet bookstores and directly from the author:  Promising the Moon, and A Family of Sicilians: Stories and Poems.

A member of the New Jersey Poetry Society since the late-70s, has been writing since childhood.Recently for two years he was the Editor of Poetidings, the newsletter of the New Jersey Poetry Society, Inc.
   
Sal is also a songwriter, having collaborated on many songs, especially country and Gospel, with his musician brother Alfonso. Four of their songs were background music in a 1989 movie, FORTRESS OF AMERIKKKA. He belongs to ASCAP and Country Music Association.

In addition to being an educator and writer, he is also a certified questioned document examiner and handwriting expert.

At present Sal lives in Lodi, New Jersey, with the love of his life, his wife Sharon. They are the pets of two cats Curaggiu and Spiranza.

WHAT YOU SAY CAN AND WILL...

Choose words carefully.
I knew a man once
who was murdered by
something he said

the razor-sharp turn
of his clever phrases
sliced full circle back
to a gaping mouth

and cut away at him
until whatever
follow-up he intended
gurgled in his throat

like meandering water
lost in a storm
or the panicky pecking
of baby birds in

their hatching
or like the death rattle
of last wishes
uttered in vain

a fool I once knew
used words so unwisely
he learned on his last day
what we say can be haunting

that promises made
are not meant to be broken
and sooner or later
we pay for our sins

ALONE

I dreamed everyone I loved
died in a plane crash
and all the people who came
to their mass funeral
told knock-knock jokes
and drank apple cider
while I said, over and over
again, "Who's there? Who's
there?" with my cup out
for one more refill.
Meanwhile, in the corrugated

boxes, hands folded, smiling,
lay all the people I ever loved.
"They're just sleeping," said
the minister. "They look dead,"
I replied. Then, almost in unison,
my loved ones sat up and took
the words right out of my mouth:
"Who's there? Who's there?"

MY WATCH SAID TIME

in this other world my watch said time
in distinct tones of tick and tock
and I understood what it meant
how the years race and seconds creep
and the mirrored face is a dream
that once we dreamt when youth was ours

in this other world time said, "Watch
where it all is heading, what it means
these racing years, these creeping seconds
and the mirrored dream.. See? it's a face
that once was youth when we were ours
and dreams came easily

watching us, this other world said, "Time
records the known, the unknown,
how years race and seconds creep
and the mirror, is it dream or youth? Look
carefully: Whose face stares back,
and lipsynchs time's passing voice?"

FEASTNIGHT OF NEW WORLDS

Pwoffk 26693 dug up accidentally a buried chest
during the sacred unearthing ceremonies
(Feastnight of New Worlds) conducted on
his one-foot by one-foot backgarden.
Within the chest he found pagan anachronisms
the Fathers of Light told Each of the us
were long ago burned.
Paper reproductions of All That Was Bad
when Each was a mere savage screaming
throat/mouth noises they rote for eyes to wread.
Paper reproductions of savage reproduction
eons before the Blessed Sacred Hatcheries,
eons before the Each could truly be Each,
free on his own one-foot by one-foot Holy Ground.

Pwoffk 26693 touched foolishly the contents
of the chest--a lock of what the Fathers of Light
called "hair" which the savages grew on throughout
their bodies! And a buk or a booc or something like
that limiting ideas to pre-conditioned Think.
A buk! from the dark age a buk of
(perish the thought!) Love!!
This was what Pwoffk 26693 cruelly thunk
to all the good minds of Each,
electro-shocking pure concept, force-sharing
headpain of blashemy. No Each however
was shocked to later Idea from Mind Central
that Pwoffk 26693 had fatally blanked
his thinkbeats (self-imposed short circuit).
The fool's eachicide saved
many good numbers from telepathos.

THE LUNCH BREAK AT NOTRE DAME

Here I am, Mon Dieu, if You kindly will.
Some relief from this oppressive Parisian heat!
Like so many spiders
entangled in the geometry of webs,
sure-footed workers scale the walls,
secure against the net
that has snared Notre Dame Cathedral.
Periodic restoration (they call it)
keeps it a giant step ahead of
the irreverent toll of cruel centuries.

I am an old man in the hottest of months,
down here at the foot of this gothic masterpiece.
As every summer afternoon
I walk here from the Boulevard de la Madeleine
with my cane and my young grandson Claud.
Together we share a lunch break at Notre Dame.
Montmartre wine, bread, local cheese.
Around us, forever young, flows the Seine.
But Claud is restless.
Never once will he lift his blond head

to see Notre Dame stretch magnificently
to heaven.
And too I wonder where are all the painters
who from these steps
captured onto canvas Our Lady's beauty?
Claud reads the newspaper to me.
These eyes of mine--what can I say!
We all grow old.
But Claud reads enough to tell me
nothing really changes in the world.

Meanwhile the workers sway on wobbling scaffolds
as they polish the pock-marked blocks
of Our Lady's stone walls.
So many spiders against the noonday sky!
In this unrelenting August heat
we wait for rain;
we pity the workers in their webs.
Claud says we must go now.
He has given his word to a friend
that he will meet him
on the Rue de Clichy.

Clouds gather now:
an answer to an old man's prayer.
Looking up, open-mouthed,
I lift my head and wait
for the first taste of grace
on my tongue.