Prairie Fire
...“I don’t splain myself,”
Bill Hickok said
before his Colts went off
A dead man lying
at his feet
—his legend time embossed
(Dreamsleep: January, 2022)...
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Categories:
hickok, anger,
Form: Rhyme
Momma Was a Rollin Stone
...Chapter 1;
THE LIGHT THAT COULD NOT BE EXTINGUESHED
They say that demons can be generational, that they can attach themselves to a family for decades with such a stronghold, that the individuals ...
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Categories:
hickok, family,
Form: Dramatic Verse
Illegal Immigrants
...This poem was written after I took a tour of the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Wyoming, the site of Custer's Last Stand.
It was the year eighteen sixty-eight.
The U.S. governmen...
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Categories:
hickok, history, immigration,
Form: Blank verse
Maybe It Was Eleanor
...Ever wonder where big ideas come from?
Memories of FDR
from newsreel clips -
a lion-headed striking man
with rakish grin,
jaw jutting proudly,
signature cigarette holder
clenched in his tee...
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Categories:
hickok, feelings, history, international, philosophy,
Form: Free verse
When the West Was Legend
...Few now look back on those times that are gone
When Hoodoo and Rudebaugh rode rough stock;
When Clantons and Cowboys carved out Tombstone
And the West was legend with Wyatt and Doc.
There's Jes...
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Categories:
hickok, nostalgia, remember, , western,
Form: Cowboy Poetry
Wild Bill Hickok
...Sitting at the table, Ole Wild Bill
Was playing with some cards, showing off his skill
He was shot in the head, when the dealing was done
Instead of Eights and Aces, He should have drawn a gun...
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Categories:
hickok, obituary,
Form: Clerihew
Aces and Eights
...
At a poker table in a Deadwood saloon,
Wild Bill Hickok popped his last balloon.
He suffered the most ignominious of fates
while holding black pairs of aces and eights.
Bill was unexpec...
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Categories:
hickok, history,
Form: Rhyme
Dead Man's Hand
...Saloon, August 2, 1876
Bill Hickok says, deal em boys
Aces and eights, click...
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Categories:
hickok, cowboy-western,
Form: Haiku
Some Place That Used To Be
...It’s some place that used to be
Where all things would fall twixt—
A beat, battered, broken shell
Off old Route 66.
He rode a Silverado
That was a dusty gold,
His clothes were worn and ragged...
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Categories:
hickok, confusion, cowboy-western, history, imagination,
Form: Cowboy Poetry
No God West of Ft. Smith
...There is no Sunday west of St. Louis
And no God that’s west of Ft. Smith—
So says the frontier adage that’s truest
And confirms the last Old West myth.
Wild Bill Hickok had him a dead man’s han...
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Categories:
hickok, angst, cowboy-western, history, nostalgia,
Form: Cowboy Poetry
The Last Camp
...As that new bunch drifted slowly into Deadwood,
Bill turned round in his saddle to Charley Utter—
Sadly told him something he’d always remember—
That which made the others smirk and weak hearts fl...
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Categories:
hickok, cowboy-western, death, faith, history,
Form: Cowboy Poetry