Once, a hundred cigarettes
glowed in just one cinema.
Arrows flew yet all were near misses,
random unaimed bullets easily knocked over
bunches of whooping Comanches.
Some horses were shot unseen off-screen.
In small Midwest towns fantasy roamed unchecked
nibbling at young hearts and brains.
Many adults pinned their hopes
on the aerodynamic tailfins of Chevy Stingrays
and more spaceship roundness in their homes.
Malls proliferated on the edge of cornfields
where prayers were answered on Sunday.
All this was normal, no one marked our
lack of awareness, we were painted innocent
by a world that had come to terms with
its time.
We knew much was wrong
some radicals fought for the oppressed.
Texas Rangers stood ready to lasso
hordes of cartoon villains.
A few federal agents imagined time travel.
The whole country was going somewhere
and working hard to ignore where we were,
as if in fact, we were all stuck in a movie
peering over the glow of a hundred cigarettes.
Categories:
comanches, poetry,
Form: Free verse
His skin like the patina of worn out leather,
burnt and cracked from many hours in the sun.
Across the wide plains in the hot Texas weather,
he rode tall in the saddle to get the job done.
North to Kansas City on this last cattle drive;
then back down to Fort Worth he hoped to survive.
Weary and tired from his night spent under the stars,
as he pushes the dogies along the Chisolm Trail;
across the dusty open range, pristine with no scars,
unlike the plains today, fenced and crowded and frail.
On his last cattle drive for the Goodnight Ranch,
heading up north across the Red River branch.
This proud crusty cowboy, way back in the day,
rode with Jack Hays at the Battle of Plum Creek,
when Buffalo Hump’s Comanches went down in dismay,
now just an old timer, tired and grey and weak.
This last cattle drive before his spurs are hung,
this cowboy’s patina, the legend of which songs are sung.
June 29, 2018
Categories:
comanches, old, retirement,
Form: Rhyme