I'm working off my sins in the usual way,
A Cornish knight of no worship,
Languishing amid the aroma
Of easy women and open bets.
Don't tell the boss, but I'd do it for free
So long as the whiskey holds out
And the law don’t flower in the Dakotas.
After all, there’s harder ways to pay one’s bar bill
Than to play piano to a room full of tin-eared inebriates.
And arrogance never has been
An obstacle to my contentment.
One of the finer points to being a bad ass
Is knowing when to fight,
When to f*ck,
And when to go for your gun.
Can I play?
Hey Carolina, I’m gonna lay your sister down.
Hey Carolina, I’m gonna lay your sister down.
I’ll ride her hogtied on the buckboard
All the way to Yankton town.
A living forest,
Where chirping birds chorale and
Butterflies whispers,
Beyond my styled wood door, and
Timbered home of nailed panels.
Date: 04/28/2019
Acacia tree satel’ the prairie land
townsfolk gather the witnessing stand
music man muster the rhythm band...
a waltz they played,
gravedigger prep a solo grave,
shackles jingle limbs accursed...
hands, feet,
each thwack step... weak, weak, weak,
hidden from popular sight
a woman, Abigail, weep
latched onto mercy’s flee.
hers the lie condemned the meek,
hangman readies the gallows floor
spring-door springs, dangling legs swings,
neck snaps a hoarsen gasp,
buckeyes bleed,
Mad dog
Dead blog
Odd lot
Dead plot
Old rot
New lot
Freak show
Bad flow
Fad fades
Odd shades
Lost space
Gone case
Zero
Hero
End game
Bad name
Leon Enriquez
25 November 2017
Singapore
DEADWOOD S.D.
deadwood s.d.
built between mountain sides
seated at cards
in that valley of death
wild bill
Dave Austin
F A L L
G U S T
T R E E
F E L L
(At Wild Bill Hickok’s Grave)
Those bold Black Hills of South Dakota,
Darkly murmur of all your Badlands—
You have left now like the Lakota—
On that hillside your monument stands.
Hills pulse under Ponderosa pines—
Strong night breezes have yet much to say—
Legends linger on lips and pale shrines—
They know that Wild Bill once passed this way.
You sleep long in this last resting place,
That now overlooks sinful Deadwood—
It is here that we still see your face,
Yet ponder if you were bad or good.
They moved your petrified form it’s said—
Casket opened, though some thought it wrong—
Your dark face yet perfect, though long dead—
Your fair hair still so flaxen and long.
Jane Cannary lays mute beside you—
A calamity that is no more—
As you study those cards in the blue—
Play that dead man’s hand from a far shore.
Saffron leaves and stern winds shape your grave—
And your name’s one that we all know still—
As you raise dark death’s ante and save,
One last red ace to trump Deadwood hill.
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