Wednesday, April 24, 2013

[Cowboy] Poet's Korner

"I never thought I'd be implicated in a melancholy closing of the west"

I see 'em, from Main Street,
in their fancy saloon
laughing, throwing
back their heads
and the latest
mixology compliments
of the new barman
in from Saint Lewis

It's their scene and
they revel with un-
hindered certainty
draped in spun
fruits from the Flowery
Kingdom

Things had been
going downhill ever
since Doc Traebis
hung up his bone saw and
belt beguiled
by the glamour of the
haberdashery game
the mud accumulated
on my boot heels

Tante tugs
my duster, she's fixin'
to come by dry
goods by nightfall
I could've sworn the
painted writhing
bacchanals sneered
at her but one
day too their spines
will curl like armadillos and
their eyes will cloud over
like the disinterested sky

The saloon was a
compartment insulated
from space-time or
whatever those college
boys back east posit
Me, I like to think
of it as a
mis-called pocket in
the cosmic billiards
The almighty is
an unseen hustler

We make for
the mercantile and
I pity them in a way
their interactions devoid
of a larger context
I'll take
my chances with Tante
and forge my own
narrative in a sod
house straddling
the urban-rural interface.

--Steed Stetson


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