Cowboy Poetry

July 28, 2009

“Muscled Loins and Haunches” by Bil LeppPosted by

Bil Lepp

MUSCLED LOINS AND HAUNCHES

Charolais was four when she figured out that
she was named for a breed of cattle—
in a town where everybody
knew everybody’s business
and everybody knew everything about cows.

When she was seven
the older boys at school
told her that
Charolais are a breed of cow known for their
heavily muscled
loins
and
haunches.
Of course that brought laughter from the older boys
and titters from the older girls.

But, she’d already learned to fight
both boys and men
at home.

She was beautiful and kind
with narrow hips
and a small chest
for which she was thankful.
She didn’t need utters in junior high. Nobody does.

Because she was named for a breed
with muscled loins and haunches
it was generally accepted by her peers
that she was a slut
because that’s what the teenage boys were hoping
when they pointed out
the muscled loins and haunches
and that’s what the girls wanted her to be
because
Charolais was so pretty with her narrow hips and small chest.
Of course she never had braces on her teeth,
but the crooked little teeth really just made her that much cuter.

She could have given in.
She could have been what everybody expected
from a girl like her
from a family like hers.

She could have left town
and told people her name was Charlie. Or Leah.
Or Sue. (That, of course, was her little joke.)

But she stuck around
and married a good boy,
the Barth’s boy,
and lived the same ordinary life
that people with their secrets and shames on the
inside
live
in town where everybody knows everybody’s business
and everybody thinks they know everything about cows.

—from Rattle #30, Winter 2008
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July 24, 2009

“Wild Bill Hacker” by Mikhail HorowitzPosted by

Mikhail Horowitz

WILD BILL HACKER
                    A Cyberwestern Ballad

Back when the Info Highway was still a dusty trail
Before the cyberstage come through to speed a man’s e-mail
When renegades like Sitting Mouse would skin the hides off hackers
There was a fella ruled the roost of databank bushwhackers

For Wild Bill the big big thrill was access, total access
He’d broken into databanks from Timbuktu to Texas
He’d back-doored into NASA, Bell, and Pentagon computers
Planting half-breeded viruses to foil pursuing shooters

He’d roll a cybercigarette and offer you a toke
And then delete your mama with a single keyboard stroke
Why in the selfsame breath it took to log on, HOWDY PARD
He’d have the Pope’s unlisted phone and Brando’s Mastercard

They chased him through the Wild Web, those bounty-hunting hordes
They posted wanted posters on a thousand bulletin boards
They combed the random canyons, through gorge and gulch and gurge
But Wild Bill would slip away as quick as a power surge

Now Tombscreen, Arizona, was a tiny one-byte town
The Sloppy Disk Saloon was dark, the DOS Hotel shut down
They had a virtual cathouse, a microsoftcore dive
And Norton Utilities General Store, established ’95

The town attracted drifters, retired keystroke hands
And those who came to disappear in Hole-in-the-Net badlands
Scroll around you, stranger: as far as the eye can see
Buttes of burnt-out terminals, and a lone directory tree

Somewhere in that wasteland, that shadow memory ruin
Where incompatible coyotes howl at a phosphor moon
Up the eroded modem and down the cordless rill
Some kid named Gene of oh, 13, had backtracked Wild Bill

The setting sun was saving all its files in the west
The stars in heaven’s disk were being brightly decompressed
An unsuspecting Wild Bill was booting his machine
When an ominous message—SNORT MY SHORTS—abruptly scorched
                    the screen

I’ll flame your name in cyberhell, the desperado cried
Reaching for the hardware that he carried at his side
Tain’t no way, the weenie scoffed, I’ve sown a jillion glitches
To ride your hapless hacker’s ass like cybersonsabitches

As if on cue Bill’s modem up and blew its brains apart
His VCR began to char his phone began to fart
His fax was going wacky and his teeth, you understand
Were picking up transmissions from the local CB band

Concurrently and violently his laptop blew its top
His microwave exploded and his beeper wouldn’t stop
His Grateful Dead on CD-ROM was programmed to erase
With Yoko Ono’s Greatest Hits imported in its place

Well that was it for Wild Bill; there ain’t much more to tattle
They cheered at his comeuppance in the cafes of Seattle
They knew, from overkill-dot-com to Blogger County Jail
That Wild Bill was roadkill on the Information Trail

And as for Gene, that brainy teen? He left the Web last year
And lives with no ’lectricity. And as for this balladeer
They modemed his Muse to Santa Cruz to be tried for cybercrimes
Including using cyber as a prefix 40 times.

—from Rattle #30, Winter 2008
Tribute to Cowboy & Western Poetry

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July 21, 2009

“Cow Songs” by M.E. HopePosted by

M.E. Hope

COW SONGS

I do not doubt that he loved the long-backed cows
more than me, and many mornings he bounded
more lithe than a calf at the chance
to be out in the barn, head pressed to flank,
as he hummed whatever tune the milk pail found.

And those days that the snow piled so deep
we had to tractor through the fields with hay
he seemed so pleased to share his girls with me
as though each was a favored child.

Nights calving, he paced farther than with any of our
own, and he could be found curled around the calf, a cow’s long
tongue washing one, and then the other, as though birthing
this man was nothing strange.

I have felt at times, the second wife, but tonight
as the sun falls, bats whir and lights appear
across the valley, he plays saxophone on the hill.
His loves lumber up from the barn, each with her own
particular sway. I move to join their parade.

—from Rattle #30, Winter 2008
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__________

M.E. Hope: “Growing up in rural Eastern Oregon I had little direction to go but toward writing; there were only so many stories the sheep, horses and cows could bear. Poetry made small lies supportable and was a safe place to hide observations that otherwise may have wronged people. Nonetheless, I stuck with it.”

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July 13, 2009

“When There’s Frost Upon the Ponies” by D.W. GroethePosted by

D.W. Groethe

WHEN THERE’S FROST UPON THE PONIES

When there’s frost upon the ponies
an’ snow drift on the ground,
an’ that yeller sun comes creepin’
through the cedars all around,
a feller gets to thinkin’
maybe winter ain’t so bad,
starts shuckin’ off the mem’ries
of the blizzards that we’ve had.
The squeakin’ an’ the crunchin’
of yer boots on mornin’ snow,
when dawn’s a-risin’ easy,
an’ ol’ time’s a-movin’ slow,
makes a feller sorta settled
in the choices that he’s made.
How he coulda wandered elsewhere,
now, he’s mighty glad he stayed.
Most folks don’t understand it,
but he knows just what he’s found …
when there’s frost upon the ponies
an’ snow drift on the ground,
an’ that yeller sun comes creepin’
through the cedars all around.

—from Rattle #30, Winter 2008
Tribute to Cowboy & Western Poetry

__________

D.W. Groethe: “I have always lived and worked where there’s buttes, coulees and prairie. My poetry, I guess, is the written expression of that existence. To be honest, I don’t know why I write poetry. I really never think about it. It’s something I’ve done since I was seven or eight years old. For me, the ‘why’ isn’t nearly as important as the doing.”

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July 11, 2009

“Fence Posts Made of Stone” by Al ‘Doc’ MehlPosted by

Al “Doc” Mehl

FENCE POSTS MADE OF STONE

In the heart of central Kansas,
Near my daddy’s boyhood home,
There are miles and miles of fences
Where the posts…are made of stone.

In the middle of the Great Plains,
Where a tree could scarce be found,
Men carved out limestone pillars,
And they sunk them in the ground.

Now, when the prairie wind comes blowin’,
Those posts don’t seem to care,
As the wires strung between them
Dance like jump ropes in the air.

And standin’ at attention,
Their shoulders never tire,
As they hold, to either side of them,
Those strands of old barbed wire.

Those posts have stood a hundred years,
They’ll stand a thousand more,
And when the wires rust away,
Folks might wonder what they’re for.

But like soldiers in formation,
Dressed in limestone grays and whites,
They do more than mark a boundary;
They salute a way of life.

They line a road paved with persistence,
Not just a homestead, but a dream
About a family’s subsistence.
Those fence posts paint a scene:

It’s a wagon, loaded down with stone;
A Morgan fights the reins;
A young man, wet with sweat,
Is buildin’ fence out on the plains.

So when it seems I’ve had a hard day,
As I haul myself back home,
Well, I just imagine Grandpa
Settin’ fence posts…made of stone.

–from Rattle #30, Winter 2008
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June 28, 2009

“Breaking Babies” by Christine GelineauPosted by

Christine Gelineau

BREAKING BABIES

Nobody breaks ranch stock the old way now,
leaving those youngsters wild till two or three
then snub ’em down, cinch ’em up, and pow,
spring to the saddle and set ’em free.

They’d sunfish, crow-hop, leap and roll, frantic
to lose the catamount hooked to their back.
The cowboy had to ride out the antics,
a feather in the storm—some had the knack

but it was hard on leather, broncs, and men.
You didn’t need to come off to get hurt;
when a bronc pile drives you, the jolt can
rattle your bones even without biting dirt.

Mostly these days we leave the rodeo
riding to the rodeo cowboys, let them
win their buckles and busted bones—you know,
ease a youngster in, avoid a problem.

Nowadays we gentle ’em while they’re foals,
teach long yearlings commands in the round pen:
jog, lope, whoa, some even get ’em to roll
back and reverse in lines, soften and bend

with the long lines, make ’em bridlewise
’afore you ever climb aboard that first time.
Trained, not busted, the way to go in my eyes.
They’ll steer soft as butter, stop on a dime.

—from Rattle #30, Winter 2008
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June 21, 2009

“Farrier” by Cal FreemanPosted by

Cal Freeman

FARRIER

A barn cat’s complaint set to the pitch of curdled milk,
the poem for Bill is no good. Bill, it gets no better:
a stone so useless it refuses to skip or sail or barter
against the wind’s heft.

Your words sprayed like gravel across the moat and landed
somewhere in the poverty grass. You have an eternity now to hold
no record. In the barn a gelding voids its bladder to the music
of wind against an aluminum roof.

They let you live here, paid you a pittance for each hoof
clipping lopped to the dirt. I called you a blacksmith once.
You corrected me, but placed little importance on the issue
with your tongs winched

to a horse’s nose, a small hammer
sending nails through its hoof.
Your mind trailing your missing teeth into dusk, you placed
a dollar in the pop machine, faltered

with the story of your travels, confusing states and mountains:
It was on Little Big Horn in Kentucky that you followed
dim tail lights into the whiteout. To say that you left
mid-sentence is to make it

seem quicker than your amble and drawl through the field,
back to the motor home, its engine block long vacant
except for bird straw and milkweed pouring
through the hood.

—from Rattle #30, Winter 2008
Tribute to Cowboy and Western Poetry

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__________

Cal Freeman: “I began writing poetry in 8th grade after reading Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. That was also around the time I started riding Arabian horses at Rushlow’s Arabian Farm in Romulus, Michigan. Horses have always puzzled and fascinated me. The poem ‘Farrier’ was written after my friend Bill’s death. He was the only person I’d let do my horse’s hooves because he wasn’t ever in a hurry. He was a guy who honored Cormac McCarthy’s dictum: ‘A good horse has justice in its heart.’”

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