Leo's Poetry Pit

[Leo Tanner]

OK, I'm sure some are wondering why in the heck I'm puttin this on a CAS website.
     Truth o' the matter is that as far as I know, poetry was still the main form of writing in the 19th century.  The men and women who wrote this stuff really knew how ta use words and make ya think.  It seems ta be a dying art these days.  Rather than jus writin down a story that come ta mind they worked hard fer their trade--and were very clever.  I have a few I'd like ta share, and would be more than happy to see anyone else join in.  If this stuff is gonna take up too much space drop me a line.

     With that, I give ya William Blake.  This was written in 1803 but not published 'til '62...


To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.
A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell through all its regions.
A dog starved at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.
A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.
A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-cock clipped and armed for fight
Does the rising sun affright.
Every wolf's and lion's howl
Raises from hell a human soul.
The wild deer wandering here and there
Keeps the human soul from care.
The lamb misused breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.
The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won't believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever's fright.
He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be beloved by men.
He who the ox to wrath has moved
Shall never be by woman loved.
The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity.
He who torments the chafer's sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.
The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother's grief.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh.
He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.
The beggar's dog and widow's cat,
Feed them, and thou wilt grow fat.
The gnat that sings his summer's song
Poison gets from Slander's tongue.
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of Envy's foot.
The poison of the honey-bee
Is the artist's jealousy.
The prince's robes and beggar's rags
Are toadstools on the miser's bags.
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
It is right it should be so:
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
The babe is more than swaddling bands,
Throughout all these human lands;
Tools were made and born were hands,
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;
This is caught by females bright
And returned to its own delight.
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar
Are waves that beat on heaven's shore.
The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes Revenge! in realms of death.
The beggar's rags fluttering in air
Does to rags the heavens tear.
The soldier armed with sword and gun
Palsied strikes the summer's sun.
The poor man's farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric's shore.
One mite wrung from the labourer's hands
Shall buy and sell the miser's lands,
Or if protected from on high
Does that whole nation sell and buy.
He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mocked in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out.
He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.
The questioner who sits so sly
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.
The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar's laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour's iron brace.
When gold and gems adorn the plough
To peaceful arts shall Envy bow.
A riddle or the cricket's cry
Is to doubt a fit reply.
The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.
If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.
The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding sheet.
The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Dance before dead England's hearse.
Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
We are led to believe a lie
When we see not through the eye
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.
God appears, and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night,
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

[Leo Tanner]

This one's from 1855.
     It interests me most cause it inspired an epic series of books written over the last 20 years or so.

     And Robert Browning wrote...

My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.

What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
All travellers who might find him posted there,
And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph
For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,

If at his council I should turn aside
Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as he pointed: neither pride
Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,
So much as gladness that some end might be.

For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,
What with my search drawn out through years, my hope
Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope
With that obstreperous joy success would bring, -
I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring
My heart made, finding failure in its scope.

As when a sick man very near to death
Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end
The tears and takes the farewell of each friend,
And hears one bid the other go, draw breath
Freelier outside, ('since all is o'er,' he saith,
'And the blow fallen no grieving can amend'

While some discuss if near the other graves
Be room enough for this, and when a day
Suits best for carrying the corpse away,
With care about the banners, scarves and staves:
And still the man hears all, and only craves
He may not shame such tender love and stay.

Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,
Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ
So many times among 'The Band' - to wit,
The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed
Their steps - that just to fail as they, seemed best,
And all the doubt was now - should I be fit?

So, quiet as despair, I turned from him,
That hateful cripple, out of his highway
Into the path he pointed. All the day
Had been a dreary one at best, and dim
Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim
Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.

For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
Than, pausing to throw backward a last view
O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; grey plain all round:
Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.
I might go on; naught else remained to do.

So, on I went. I think I never saw
Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:
For flowers - as well expect a cedar grove!
But cockle, spurge, according to their law
Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,
You'd think: a burr had been a treasure-trove.

No! penury, inertness and grimace,
In some strange sort, were the land's portion. 'See
Or shut your eyes,' said Nature peevishly,
'It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:
'Tis the Last Judgement's fire must cure this place,
Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.'

If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents
Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents
In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to balk
All hope of greeness? 'tis a brute must walk
Pushing their life out, with a brute's intents.

As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud
Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
Stood stupefied, however he came there:
Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!

Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
I never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked to deserve such pain.

I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart.
As a man calls for wine before he fights,
I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,
Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.
Think first, fight afterwards - this soldier's art:
One taste of the old time sets all to rights.

Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face
Beneath its garniture of curly gold,
Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold
An arm in mine to fix me to the place,
That way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace!
Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold.

Giles then, the soul of honour - there he stands
Frank as ten years ago when knighted first.
What honest man should dare (he said) he durst.
Good - but the scene shifts - faugh! what hangman-hands
Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands
Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!

Better this present than a past like that;
Back therefore to my darkening path again!
No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.
Will the night send a howlet or a bat?
I asked: when something on the dismal flat
Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.

A sudden little river crossed my path
As unexpected as a serpent comes.
No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;
This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath
For the fiend's glowing hoof - to see the wrath
Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.

So petty yet so spiteful! All along,
Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;
Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit
Of mute despair, a suicidal throng:
The river which had done them all the wrong,
Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.

Which, while I forded, - good saints, how I feared
To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek,
Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek
For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!
- It may have been a water-rat I speared,
But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek.

Glad was I when I reached the other bank.
Now for a better country. Vain presage!
Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage,
Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank
Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,
Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage -

The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.
What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?
No foot-print leading to that horrid mews,
None out of it. Mad brewage set to work
Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.

And more than that - a furlong on - why, there!
What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,
Or brake, not wheel - that harrow fit to reel
Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air
Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware,
Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.

Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,
Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth
Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,
Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood
Changes and off he goes!) within a rood -
Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth.

Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,
Now patches where some leanness of the soil's
Broke into moss or substances like boils;
Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him
Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim
Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.

And just as far as ever from the end!
Naught in the distance but the evening, naught
To point my footstep further! At the thought,
A great black bird, Apollyon's bosom-friend,
Sailed past, not beat his wide wing dragon-penned
That brushed my cap - perchance the guide I sought.

For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,
'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place
All round to mountains - with such name to grace
Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.
How thus they had surprised me, - solve it, you!
How to get from then was no clearer case.

Yet half I seemed to recognise some trick
Of mischief happened to me, God knows when -
In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, the,
Progress this way. When, in the very nick
Of giving up, one time more, came a click
As when a trap shuts - you're inside the den!

Burningly it came on me all at once,
This was the place! those two hills on the right,
Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;
While to the left, a tall scalped mountain...Dunce,
Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,
After a life spent training for the sight!

What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart,
Built of brown stone, without a counterpart
In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf
Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf
He strikes on, only when the timbers start.

Not see? because of night perhaps? - why, day
Came back again for that! before it left,
The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:
The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay, -
'Now stab and end the creature - to the heft!'

Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled
Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears
Of all the lost adventurers my peers, -
How such a one was strong, and such was bold,
And such was fortunate, yet each of old
Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.

There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew. 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.'

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

 Leo

[Silver Creek Slim]

The Tyger
By William Blake

Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

[Advertising]

[Silver Creek Slim]

Eldorado
by Edgar Allen Poe
 
Gayly bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old,
This knight so bold,
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow:
"Shadow,'' says he,
"Where can it be,
This land of Eldorado?''

Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,''
The shade replied,
"If you seek for Eldorado!''

[Russ T Chambers]

Slim

I hope you did that in your best James Caan imitation voice! 

[Russ T Chambers]

The Shooting of Dan McGrew
A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou.
When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and glare,
There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.
He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and scarcely the strength of a louse,
Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks for the house.
There was none could place the stranger's face, though we searched ourselves for a clue;
But we drank his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew.

There's men that somehow just grip your eyes, and hold them hard like a spell;
And such was he, and he looked to me like a man who had lived in hell;
With a face most hair, and the dreary stare of a dog whose day is done,
As he watered the green stuff in his glass, and the drops fell one by one.
Then I got to figgering who he was, and wondering what he'd do,
And I turned my head--and there watching him was the lady that's known as Lou.

His eyes went rubbering round the room, and he seemed in a kind of daze,
Till at last that old piano fell in the way of his wandering gaze.
The rag-time kid was having a drink; there was no one else on the stool,
So the stranger stumbles across the room, and flops down there like a fool.
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway,
Then he clutched the keys with his talon hands--my God! but that man could play.

Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear;
With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold,
A helf-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold;
While high overhead, green, yellow, and red, the North Lights swept in bars?--
Then you've a hunch what the music meant...hunger and might and the stars.

And hunger not of the belly kind, that's banished with bacon and beans,
But the gnawing hunger of lonely men for a home and all that it means;
For a fireside far from the cares that are, four walls and a roof above;
But oh! so cramful of cosy joy, and crowded with a woman's love--
A woman dearer than all the world, and true as Heaven is true--
(God! how ghastly she looks through her rouge,--the lady that's known as Lou.)

Then on a sudden the music changed, so soft that you scarce could hear;
But you felt that your life had been looted clean of all that it once held dear;
That someone had stolen the woman you loved; that her love was a devil's lie;
That your guts were gone, and the best for you was to crawl away and die.
'Twas the crowning cry of a heart's despair, and it thrilled you through and through--
"I guess I'll make it a spread misere," said Dangerous Dan McGrew.

The music almost dies away...then it burst like a pent-up flood;
And it seemed to say, "Repay, repay," and my eyes were blind with blood.
The thought came back of an ancient wrong, and it stung like a frozen lash,
And the lust awoke to kill, to kill...then the music stopped with a crash,
And the stranger turned, and his eyes they burned in a most peculiar way;

In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;
Then his lips went in in a kind of grin, and he spoke, and his voice was calm,
And "Boys," says he, "you don't know me, and none of you care a damn;
But I want to state, and my words are straight, and I'll bet my poke they're true,
That one of you is a hound of hell...and that one is Dan McGrew."

Then I ducked my head and the lights went out, and two guns blazed in the dark;
And a woman screamed, and the lights went up, and two men lay stiff and stark.
Pitched on his head, and pumped full of lead, was Dangerous Dan McGrew,
While the man from the creeks lay clutched to the breast of the lady that's known as Lou.

These are the simple facts of the case, and I guess I ought to know.
They say that the stranger was crazed with "hooch," and I'm not denying it's so.
I'm not so wise as the lawyer guys, but strictly between us two--
The woman that kissed him and--pinched his poke--was the lady known as Lou.

[Cyrille]

Might a living poet post?

[Delmonico]

Might a living poet post?

Nope, only dead ones.

[Delmonico]

Ok, maybe a live one or two, since Wally McRae is still 'live, but he is a "Cowboy PO8."

Boot Shopping

It seemed to me a simple thing since my socks was showin' through:
Turn my old boots out to pasture, and buy a pair--brand new.
Well, they built this cowboy K-Mart outa town there in the Mall,
Where I parked my Studdybaker after shippin' drys this fall.
I found the store right easy 'thout gettin' tromped or gored,
And this clerk with a complexion like he'd growed up 'neath a board
Is a-lurkin'at the boot pile an' he asks me, "Help you, sir?"
Seems he knows that I'm a live one so I answers back, "Why sure."
I tole him that my Hyers, that I'd had for thirty year,
Prob'ly was made faulty. And that I seen him sneer,
As he eyeballs how I'm shod. Then he dimples me a smile,
Says, "I can put you in exotics of the very latest style."
I snorts at his "exotics," tells him, "I'm a Hereford man,
But style sounds right 'cause, sonny, I'm an all-time ranahan."
He starts in crackin' critter skins outa boxes that's absurd.
Why, one has prolapsed puckers like it come off'n a bird!
There's lizzards, snakes and horny toads, crocodiles and eels,
Alligators, sharks; I'm feelin' faint. I staggers and I reels.
I tells that sucker, "Whoa! Call off them varmits from yer swamp.
I ain't about to put no foot in things I'm scairt to stomp!"

If yer gettin' yerself reshod, well, pardner, here's a clue,
Avoid them scaly crawlers that'll strike 'r bite 'r chew.
Ask that boot clerk, "Do you carry and kangaroos or camels?
Or somethin' in warm-blooded? I'm partial t'wards them mammals!"

[Silver Creek Slim]

Slim

I hope you did that in your best James Caan imitation voice! 

I was watching it when I posted it. 

Slim

[Leo Tanner]

Might a living poet post?

If you are reffering ta yerself, I'd say go fer it.    It is a dying art and if ya enjoy keepin it alive, feel free ta share.


Leo

[Delmonico]

Well if it ain't good, he might not be a living one for long.


Well whoever wrote this one must be dead, well over a 100 years old.

Windy Bill

Windy Bill was a Texas man,
Well, he could rope, you bet;
Talk of the steer he could n't tie down
Had n't sorter been born yet;
The boys they knew of an old black steer,
A sort of an old outlaw,
Who ran down in the bottom
Just at the foot of a rocky draw.

This slim black steer had stood his ground
With punchers from everywhere;
The boys they Bill two to one
He couldn't quite get there.
So Bill brought up his old cow-horse—
His wethers and back were sore—
Prepared to tackle this old black steer
Who ran down in the draw.

With his grazin' bits and sand-stacked tree,
His chaps and taps to boot,
His old maguey tied hard and fast,
Went out to tackle the brute.
Bill sorter sauntered around him first;
The steer began to paw,
Poled up his tail high in the air
And lit down in the draw.

The old cow-horse flew at him
Like he'd been eatin' corn,
And Bill he landed his old maguey
Around old blackie's horns.
The old-time horse he stopped dead-still;
The cinches broke like straw;
Both the sand-stacked tree and the old maguey,
Went driftin' down the draw.

Bill landed in a big rock-pile;
His hands and face were scratched;
He 'lowed he always could tie a steer
But guessed he'd found his match.
Paid up his bet like a little man,
Without a bit of jaw,
And said old blackie was the boss
Of all down in the draw.

There's a moral to my story, boys,
Which I hope you can see;
Whenever you start to tackle a steer
Never tie hard your maguey.
Put on your dalebueltas,
'Cordin' to California law,
And you will never see your old rim-fires
Driftin' down the draw.

[Leo Tanner]

Well if it ain't good, he might not be a living one for long.

Gotta say you guys have come up with some good 'ens


Leo

[Delmonico]

'Nuther one collected boy Nathan Howard "Jack" Thrope.


We were camped on the plains at the head of the Cimmaron
When along came a stranger and stopped to arger some.
He looked so very very foolish that we began to look around,
We thought he was a greenhorn that had just 'scaped from town.

We asked him if he had he been to breakfast;  he had n't had a smear;
So we opened up the chuck-box and bade him have his share.
He took a cup of coffee and some biscuits and some beans,
And then began to talk and tell about foreign kings and queens,

About the Spanish War and fighting on on the seas
With guns as big as steers and ramrods big as trees,--
And about old Paul Jones, a mean-fighting son of a gun,
Who was the grittiest cuss that ever pulled a gun.

Such an educated feller, his thoughts just came in herds,
He astonished all them cowboys with them jaw-breaking words.
He just kept on talking till he made the  boys all sick
And they began to look around just how to play a trick.

He said he had lost his job upon the Santa Fe
And was going across the plains to strike the 7-D.
He did n't say how come it, some trouble with the boss,
But said he'd like to borrow a nice fat saddle horse.

This tickled all the boys to death; they laughed 'way down in their sleeves--
"We will lend you a horse just as fresh and fat as you please."
Shorty grabbed a lariat and roped the Zebra Dun
And turned him over to the stranger and waited for the fun.

Old Dunny was a rocky outlaw that had grown so awful wild
That he could paw the white out of the moon every jump for a mile.
Old Dunny stood right still--as if he didn't know--
Until he was saddled and ready for to go.

When the stranger hit the saddle, old Dunny quit the earth,
And traveled right straight up for all that he was worth.
A-pitching and a-squealing, a-having wall-eyed fits,
His hind feet perpendicular, his front ones in the bits.

We could see the tops of mountains under Dunny every jump,
But the stranger he was growed there just like the camel's hump;
The stranger sat upon him and curled his black moustache,
Just like a summer boarder waiting for his hash.

He thumped him in the shoulders and spurred him when he whirled,
To show them flunky punchers that he was the wolf of the world.
When the stranger had dismounted once more upon the ground,
We knew he was a thoroughbred and not a gent from town;

The boss, who was standing round watching of the show,
Walked right up to the stranger and told him he need n't go--
"If you can use a lasso like you rode old Zebra Dun,
You are the man I've been looking for ever since the year one."

Oh he could twirl the lariat and he did n't didn't do it slow;
He could catch them fore feet nine out of ten for any kind of dough,
There's one thing and a shore thing I've learned since I've been born,
That every educated feller ain't a plumb greenhorn.

[Cyrille]

Yes! I waz reffurin ta myself, I'm a published poet but not in the cowboy venue mostly in the romantic venue/narritive type poetry. I would be happy to share some of my efforts with my pards.

[Delmonico]

I'm a published poet but not in the cowboy venue mostly in the romantic venue/narritive type poetry. 

OK, but if it's smutty Slim will delete it.

[Delmonico]

By Badger Clark


A Bad Half Hour

Wonder why I feel so restless;
    Moon is shinin' still and bright,
Cattle all is restin' easy,
    But I just kain't sleep tonight.
Ain't no cactus in my blankets,
    Don't know why they feel so hard—
'Lesst it's Warblin' Jim a-singin'
    "Annie Laurie" out on guard.

"Annie Laurie"— wish he'd quit it!
    Couldn't sleep now if I tried.
Makes the night seem big and lonesome
    And my throat feels sore inside.
How my Annie used to sing it!
    And it sounded good and gay.
Nights I drove her home from dances
    When the east was turning gray.

Yes, "her brow was like the snowdrift"
    And her eyes like quiet streams,
"And her face" — I still can see it
    Much too frequent in my dreams;
And her hand was soft and trembly
    That night underneath the tree,.
When I couldn't help but tell her
    She was "all the world to me."

But her folks said I was "shif'less,"
    "Wild," "unsettled.,"— they was right,
For I leaned to punchin' cattle
    And I'm at it still tonight.
And she married young Doc Wilkins—
    Oh my Lord! but that was hard!
Wish that fool would quit his singin'
    "Annie Laurie" out on guard.

Oh I just kaint stand it thinkin;
    Of the things that happened then.
Good old times, and all apast me!
    Never seem to come again—
My turn? Sure.  I'll come a runnin'.
    Warm me up some coffee, pard—
But I'll stop that Jim from singin'
    "Annie Laurie" out on guard.

[Cyrille]

OK, but if it's smutty Slim will delete it.

By Romance, I mean poetry in the Romance genre, not smut!

[Cyrille]

The Last Centaur

He lay at the meadow's edge,
forelegs folded beneath him.
His dark chestnut body, molten
where muscle quivers in sunlight.

The light mist lends sheen to his coat,
burgundy and black in decendent light.
His hair like liquid silver where
touched by the sun.

His underbelly ebony,
with tracks of pearly iridescence
where dampness runs.

He does not move, seems hardly to breathe.
His chin, nestled in a beard of ice grey,
rests on his still muscular chest.
His brown eyes flutter now and again.

He has returned to this meadow
of his childhood for the last time;
as the sun ebbs from the sky, a feeble whinny
a last expulsion of breath...

His head droops, I gaze at lengthening shadows;
fingers of darkness that grasp at the meadow.
When I look back, he is gone,
like a cloud burned away by the sun.

[Delmonico]

Nuther by the great Badger Clark.

Went set to music it's most often called "Glory Trail," read as a poem it's most often "High-Chin Bob."

'Way high up the Mogollons,
    Among the mountain tops,
A lion cleaned a yearlin's bones
    And licked his thankful chops,
When on the picture who should ride,
    A-trippin' down a slope,
But High-Chin Bob, with sinful pride
     And mav'rick hungry rope.

"Oh, glory be to me," says he,
    "And fame's unfadin' flowers!
All meddlin' hands are far away;
I ride my good top-hawse today
And I'm top-rope of the Lazy J—
    Hi! kitty-cat, you're ours!"

That lion licked his paw so brown
    And dreamed soft dreams of veal—
And then the circlin' loop swung down
    And roped him 'round his meal.
He yowled quick fury to the world
    Till all the hills yelled back;
The top-hawse gave a snort and whirled
    And Bob caught up the slack.

"Oh, glory be to me," laughs he.
    "We hit the glory trail.
No human man as I have read
Darst loop a ragin' lion's head,
Nor ever hawse could drag one dead
    Until we told the tale."

'Way high up the Mogollons
    That top-hawse done his best,
Through whippin' brush and rattlin' stones,
    From canyon-floor to crest.
But ever when Bob turned and hoped
    A limp remains to find,
A red-eyed lion, belly roped
    But healthy, loped behind.

"Oh, glory be to me," grunts he.
    "This glory trail is rough,
Yet even till the Judgment Morn
I'll keep this dally 'round the horn,
For never any hero born
    Could stoop to holler: ''Nuff!'"

Three suns had rode their circle home
    Beyond the desert's rim,
And turned their star-herds loose to roam
    The ranges high and dim;
Yet up and down and 'round and 'cross
    Bob pounded, weak and wan,
For pride still glued him to his hawse
    And glory drove him on.

"Oh, glory be to me," sighs he.
    "He kain't be drug to death,
But now I know beyond a doubt
Them heroes I have read about
Was only fools that stuck it out
    To end of mortal breath."

'Way high up the Mogollons
    A prospect man did swear
That moon dreams melted down his bones
    And hoisted up his hair:
A ribby cow-hawse thundered by,
    A lion trailed along,
A rider, ga'nt but chin on high,
    Yelled out a crazy song.

"Oh, glory be to me!" cries he,
    "And to my noble noose!
Oh, stranger, tell my pards below
I took a rampin' dream in tow,
And if I never lay him low,
    I'll never turn him loose!"