A sketch of cimarron
shades: an appollyon emerges,
her spectre arms reach
like the charcoal bones
of the wild, the webbed trees.
Their silhouette absorbed
into the night clasp
the edge of the curved
slice of moon, cocaine
colored and as potent.
For ancient stories are spun
within its orbit.
It is a black and
white rock that once had oceans,
the orb created
by a long ago
planet colliding with Earth.
A diabolical
world pushes against
our mortal microcosm, in which
molded flesh is a cloak
shaped to kill, and shed.
Stripped of this armour, we meld
into death, a viscous
void of the sublime
intense beating, of puissance,
zoetic. Tincture
of a collapsed white
dwarf, the distant plum red throb
that emits heat, burns.
Earthly demon world
nabs; chalk rubbed into pores.
Human colors drown.
Categories:
cimarron, allah, allusion, angst, color,
Form: Haiku
boom town of Osage,
the Oklahoma land rush. . .
first western to win
Copyright © 2018 by Mark Toney. All rights reserved.
First published 2018 in Hollywood Haiku via wattpad.com
Categories:
cimarron, conflict, film, , western,
Form: Haiku
Cowboy Howdy the Clown still goes
To town with ten little shoes on his toes
Purple hair and a square blue nose
Ten grey flowers for Cimarron Rose
An itty bitty teeny weeny cowboy hat
Vaquero chaps and a little dogies tat
A plug of chaw and a lariat
Two six-shooters and a shoulder rat
He sure looks silly; he sure looks strange
And he's looking for his home on the range.
Categories:
cimarron, animal, home, humorous, nursery
Form: Cowboy Poetry
I got wed in twenty-two.
Took this place with mortgage, new.
Built a fence around my land,
plowed that grass with my own bare hands.
Planted collards, corn and beans.
Prettiest spread you ever seen.
Rain don’t come, it leaves you dry,
Underneath that big old sky.
Got no river, ain’t no rain,
lonely here on the great dry plain.
Nature’s older, bigger’n me.
You can’t cheat her, no sirree.
Twenty acres turned to dust,
my new tractor, gathering rust.
Wind blew down from Cimarron there,
big black dirt all in the air.
Ain’t no beans or collards now,
ain’t no nothing left to plow.
Heading out for Monterrey,
nothing here to make us stay.
Windmill, tractor, homestead, plow:
wind and dust can have ‘em now.
Categories:
cimarron, history,
Form: Couplet
“Cowboys” , big John Wayne starred.
Cowhands abandon him.
Call, joining the Goldrush.
Could greenhorn kids succeed.
Camp cook and chuck wagon,
Complete the trail crew drive.
Cow punching green schoolboys
Called on to claim their jobs.
Cimarron, the oldest,
Capricious, turned away.
Cow punching, green schoolboys
Combating bucking horse,
Caught on to rope, brand, herd
Cattle, and cow-horses.
Cattle drive is ready.
Cimarron follows close.
Cattle-rustlers kill Will,
Corralling all his herd.
Cow punching green schoolboys
Caught and killed the rustlers.
Complete the cattle-drive.
Cattle sold, gravestone bought.
Carved, “ Beloved Husband and Father”
8/22/2016
Not for contest:
Pleiades C
22 lines, 6 syllable each line
17th line 9 syllables
The Cowboys is a 1972 American western film starring John Wayne,
John Wayne nickname Duke
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cowboys
using;
http://www.howmanysyllables.com/poem_syllable_counter_workshop/index
Categories:
cimarron, bereavement, children, teen, ,
Form: Pleiades
In the distance of the Cimarron desert
clouds mound in peach hues as the horizon they skirt.
Hot smoldering parched winds whirl along the ground
clasping all dew and moisture all around.
Cactus in the mid day purge with anguished heat
out of its pores, milk does excrete.
Heat rays beating out a sound
in the Cimarron sand, one could drown.
Beauty in the silence of this dry forbidden place
life and death in an endless race.
Wet moist drops of liquid cool fluid of life
death has lost face in rife.
Over distant Cimarron mountain terrains
nightfall cascades in violent rains.
Categories:
cimarron, life, mystery, nature, time,
Form: Free verse
Cresting the rise, a glare in his eyes.
Squinting as sharp shards of sun
reflect off the river.
His gloved hand instinctively shadows his face.
Dust in the wind, talcum powder thin
coating, caressing, coloring
grass, leaves, cowboys and cattle
all shades of sepia and cocoa brown.
The river is low, the current slow.
A turtle shell mound of mud, mid-stream,
rutted by thousands of hooves.
Punchers pause, stirrup deep,
the Cimarron soaking up through their souls.
Memories flood without warning
just like this river,
Swollen and swift, it sends cattle
crashing, thrashing, slashing.
The kid, that’s all anyone knew him as, just “The Kid”,
hung up under his longhorn-punctured pony,
was buried amidst those sycamores.
He never did see the Kansas plains.
Shifting in his saddle, blinking away the vision,
the rider’s breath catches in his chest.
A daydream? Mirage?
Or shadows of the past, lingering,
where once they crossed the Cimarron on the Chisholm Trail?
Mopping the dust from his forehead, he rides on,
leaving the past to itself.
Jeff Hildebrandt © 2005
Categories:
cimarron, cowboy-western,
Form: Cowboy Poetry