Long Horseless Poems
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Escaping Death
(written in a mental hospital)
I escaped from Death today,
And I don't know what to think.
Because when Death comes round and round,
you start to feel his scent and stink.
There are others counting on me now.
I can't let them down, this I know.
So close to Death and yet, so certain-
now I'm back to life, if just a little while
to finally pull back the curtain.
Still others only see- the ghost
that walks these halls forbidden.
I don't know how to talk to them,
the horseless carriage is hidden.
My pen feels broken,
still it flies against the page once more.
Swirling new tales in ink and bone.
Yet my ghost, she still sings for home.
Morality and death
hang over me.
Still, I'm used to these things.
I try to speed up the hour I'm closest to hell.
But as I creep ever slow,
the witch rings her last bell.
You can only listen to a cd once,
then the magic is gone.
But it still lingers in your ears,
in the mind and in heaven
their voices still ring on.
Year 1488
Daring to hide it in verses and score,
Mother Shipton predicted her scrolls would not be understood until years after her body’s release.
Read aloud by an educated nephew, almost five decades after they were protected by a family of peace.
She may have been burned at the stake for her predictions of America’s Civil War, simply for being a she.
Her prophesies included horseless carriages, and men’s future unfathomable plans to conquer both the sky and the sea.
Understanding that a metallic monster, would change education, and the menfolk from farms would flee.
Pictures that feel alive – computers, U-tube, I-pads, video and their predecessor – TV?
Mother predicted all this and more. Daring to hide it in verses and score,
Nostradamus had protection of patrons, medical background, sublime.
Mother Shipton knew her predictions she had best write down in decipherable rhyme.
England’s most famous prophetess, born in Norfolk, England in 1488, she dared not share her fire. Prophesized that women would cut their hair short, and wear trousers, practically three hundred years prior.
When I think of her brilliance at hiding her mystical savvy, hiding psychic self in her moods,
Her declaration that “men will live as hogs” makes me smile, predicting processed foods?
London fire seeing before the fact, she knew of the Catholic Church’s fall, the rise of Elizabeth,
Me thinks a comet is coming that will circle the earth for six days, six nights, causing us instant death.
A homely woman, she may have been, but her ideas were sound, as they came right in.
Daring to hide it in verses and score, Prophetess Mother Shipton, forevermore!
A sinewy faith built rough cabins.
We were pleased to claim this land
for Jesus.
We raised cities that were bear free.
Everything soared;
later crime and meth rose even
higher.
Cracks appeared where a garish paint
had weathered the sky.
Plaster flamingos crumbled,
angelic limbs hung down
caught in ceiling fissures.
Pink plastic arrows littered concrete.
It was a Mall dream; it was our dream.
We began to order stuff
from worker ants in other countries.
Plaid went in and out of fashion,
Horseless cowboys kept up the long tradition
of truck wrangling.
Impedimenta impeded the improperly taught.
Log cabins transported themselves
to theme parks,
too little hope clogged casinos floors,
rage stalked the freeways.
God spoke to us,
urged us to fill storage units
with our long raked-over crap,
sad holy relics in duct taped boxes -
yet neatly piled
in a persnickety Midwest way.
Spring, the mischievous libertine,
Has twitched from the chrysalis of dull realities,
Sneaking, slyly, among norms and tasteless thoughts,
A live torch in the old auditoriums where science quivers with emotion.
With the gesture of a diva, she shatters windows of routine,
Performing a flamboyant escape from the "Notre-Dame de Sion" stronghold,
Letting her laughter fill the voids, in a gala recital,
Exuberantly, she unfurls her golden curls over the musty chapters.
The sign of a procession calls me to follow her,
And I plunge into the pursuit, a furrow-browed initiate,
To cajole her in the park's gazebos or along the edges of sidewalks,
Where shadows of the past still dance in minuet steps.
But I shiver and melt in this effervescent chase,
On the path of memory, her silhouette hides,
Slipping through the city's fabric, uncaught, shredding the call...
Perhaps she has transformed, donned new masks,
And our steps no longer caress the same pavement in the same symphony,
Our orbits are now from different galaxies,
And we dance separately in this stellar comedy.
On the somber walkways of the Athenaeum, to the horseless carriage of the hippodrome,
Spring has met no writer to sketch her entrance,
No one to greet her with the gravitas of a serenade - "welcome back!",
And, with her coquettish ways, perhaps she reflected herself in the shop windows of the city,
Realizing that she was the goddess of a round dream from which she's just awakened,
And reality has blown upon her the cold mirror of a fleeting epoch.
Spring, the eternal young charlatan, with lips of myth,
Do you wonder, dreamy and vain as you are,
If you've sealed your fate within the pages of an unwritten history,
And dissipated into the air, like a fantasy struggling for a moment of eternity?
A lot of fancy gizmos befuddle me in this technological age,
Where perplexing computers, texting and twittering are all the rage!
I can empathize with the feller who renounced horse and buggy days,
To subdue the baffling horseless carriage that became all the craze!
Clyde Schlunk reluctantly retired his faithful horse and buggy wheels.
He was the first in town to own one of those new fangled automobiles!
'Twas simple to harness a horse, feed him oats and shoe him all those years.
Now he must master complex clutches, cranks and shifting gears!
'Twas hard to break years of habits spent driving a buggy and horse.
He still had his buggy whip near at hand in the automobile of course!
When trying to stop the machine he'd yell, "Whoa! Nellie! Whoa!"
As he tried to avoid a tree or slid through slippery sleet and snow!
His erratic driving terrified chickens, horses and little old ladies,
As he whipped about that sedate little town like a bat out of Hades!
The only pain he suffered from his horse was a kick now and then.
But when cranking the carriage he busted his knuckles over and over again!
He still hollered "haw" to turn to the left and "gee" to turn to the right!
Did the town folks' ridicule bother him? Not by a blame sight!
Clyde never learned how to control those forty horses under the hood.
He couldn't rein 'em in causing all sorts of havoc in the neighborhood!
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
© All Rights Reserved
Placed No. 2 in Joyce Johnson's "Your Very Best" Contest - February 2011
Year 1488
Daring to hide it in verses and score,
Ursula Shipton predicted her scrolls would not be understood until years after her body’s release.
Read aloud by an educated nephew, almost five decades after they were protected by a family of peace.
She may have been burned at the stake for her predictions of America’s Civil War, simply for being a she.
Her prophesies included horseless carriages, and men’s future unfathomable plans to conquer both the sky and the sea.
Understanding that a metallic monster, would change education, and the menfolk from farms would flee.
Pictures that feel alive – computers, U-tube, I-pads, video and their predecessor – TV?
Mother predicted all this and more. Daring to hide it in verses and score,
Nostradamus had protection of patrons, medical background, sublime.
Ursula Shipton knew her predictions she had best write down in decipherable rhyme.
England’s most famous prophetess, born in Norfolk, England in 1488, she dared not share her fire. Prophesized that women would cut their hair short, and wear trousers, practically three hundred years prior.
When I think of her brilliance at hiding her mystical savvy, hiding psychic self in her moods,
Her declaration that “men will live as hogs” makes me smile, predicting processed foods?
London fire seeing before the fact, she knew of the Catholic Church’s fall, the rise of Elizabeth,
Me thinks a comet is coming that will circle the earth for six days, six nights, causing us instant death.
A homely woman, she may have been, but her ideas were sound, as they came right in.
Daring to hide it in verses and score, Prophetess Ursula Shipton, forevermore!
Cowboys in the Badlands
The horses need be reined tightly
lest they show better judgment
and head back to the barn. The
cowboys, driven by the dust cloud
of following hoof beats, were less smart.
A Gila monster smirks as they pass
knowing what waits ahead is to be
more painful than the rope they flee.
Driven by the torments of a lost war,
a lost home, a lost dream, they had
lashed out at the hunger, fled the
hovels of a shanty town and swore
to exact payment any way possible.
The consequences of the decision
pursued them, consumed them,
as they rested the horses. The horses
must rest, they never would.
They stood overlooking the badlands,
shimmering heat’s forever fallacy,
that somehow you would cross to
safety, find an oasis, escape. Oh,
you may escape the posse, maybe
even the past, but you will not
escape the bitterness of these
bad lands and their unforgiving
demands. Few have come here
willingly, fewer have remained
once tested by the dryness, the
drought, the wind, sand, and
anger of a land seeking to be
left alone. And so they rode into
the abyss of sand and stone
leaving only the hoof prints
of fading memory. Bandanas
covered their faces, hat brims
covered their eyes. They rode
until the horses fell, unable to
continue. Horseless, they staggered
in the shifting sands laughing
as they recalled staggering from
the saloon on that awful night.
The night they gave up, the night
they gave in to the desperate desire
to be free. A desire that was now
to be fulfilled in these Bad Lands.
For Isaiah Zerbst – Cowboys in the Badlands poetry contest
9/15/2014
Lessons on Head Containment
People lose their heads
It’s what they do
And should it happen to you
Someone could use it for bowling
Let us pray for containment
Generally and specifically speaking
It is advised
Don’t be born
At the time of the guillotine
Or be of any political persuasion
From that
Or any other era or period in time
Though guillotine is
The great weight loss program
(“2 pounds off the top please!”)
Keep your head with you at all times
When going for a walk
Place your left hand firmly
Over the left side of the head
Place right hand on right of head
And do not prance
Do not look at the sun
It’s already compromised
Decapitated
Removed from other celestial bodies
If someone chases you with an ax
Run…. (Aspirins won’t help)
Bring a bread sized basket with you
If something should happen
Avoid the cost or loss of head containment
Soak it in cool water
Hide your head under covers
From headless horsemen
Or is it horseless headmen?
Beware of pigmies with their stitches
Try not to dangle in the wind by rope
It makes you look silly & dopy or worse
….. Dead….
If all else fails
Go gambling but
Don’t lose your head
(The husband of Henriette is in a casino, playing
roulette, and not especially concerned about her
plight. The Hotel Dieux is a hospital alongside
Notre Dame Cathedral, in downtown Paris.)
5. Joseph Caillaux
When? The chips are down. This is a marriage,
this black and red. Rien ne va plus, he said!
Let's go! We came here in a horseless carriage,
tonight we'll have the sidewalk for a bed.
(My little joke.) What's that you say, mon vieux?
The Tax Bill? That's how politicians play it.
(This wheel will put me in the Hôtel Dieu!)
A private confidence -- you don't betray it.
A public face (it can't be otherwise)
is oftentimes at variance with the private.
But Calmette's type are sneakers, peekers, spies,
would wreck a man (and frequently contrive it!)
Mon brave, I'm not the man to fight a duel.
You risk your life, your health, or prosecution --
for what? You lose, you're dead. You win, you fuel
the anger of your foes. It's no solution.
She said she would. (I'll spin, and win for us!)
I've long since left off thinking of it. (Thus!)