Long Saloons Poems

Trifolium pollinated courtesy bombus

Before landscapers mow swaths
across undulating waves of clover
(the father/daughter team
usually cut grass every Tuesday)
bumblebees alight from one to another flower.

Meanwhile, I lie splayed
mid morning June 28th, 2022
with stomach upon natural carpeting
quietly basking...

Read More

NOTE TO THE READER
Once Apun a Time

This yarn is a flossy fabric woven of several earlier warped works, lightly laced together, adorned with fur-ther braided tails of human frailty. The looms were loosed, purling frantically...

Read More

(Historical train-ride on the first Transcontinental Railroad in 1870 from Omaha to Ogden aboard the Union Pacific Railroad)     © 2009 (Jim Sularz)

Wyoming winds blow like a hurricane,
the flimsy bridge sways to...

Read More

I.
Bob Harney was riding upon the evening stage,
worried they’d not reach Pelltown before light did fade,
he hoped they didn’t have to spend the night camping out,
they’d heard the Arapahos were raiding around.

The others in the...

Read More

II.
In the week that followed that cold, hard scene,
Reno settled in and got down to work,
he did tie up loose ends for the estate,
but mostly in the saloons did lurk.

Listening hard for any rumor,
even if...

Read More

There was a fiddler, back in eighty-three,
a young fellow who called himself Monty,
wasn’t much of a worker, that is no lie,
but oh, how fast his fingers could fly…

He came from the east, most people did...

Read More

The man shook and said, “They wanted some fun,
but the boy was small, he started to bleed.
Patrick threw him out back, said, ‘This one’s shot,
but we have others to see to our needs.’”

Dalton’s face darkened...

Read More

Daughters of Medusa


                   
Grey hair, ginger hair, dark hair......
All simmering in an inverted jar,
Cooked and fried
Headshrinkers doing...

Read More

Lyle Cosgrove had worked the Silver Queen
for two years now, ever since he had left
family drama back in Ohio,
he had simply left his home and moved west.

He made a living as a gambler,
had spent months...

Read More

There are Guineas that live in America
Guineas that live in a zoo
But the craziest, zaniest guineas of all
Are the ones that reside in Peru

It is said that they live in the Andes
And on weekends they...

Read More

This old car written by a parky ,


I have a friend Denitia 
A lovely lady she is
I rang her up one morning
To see if she was in

We decided to have some fun
In an old reck...

Read More

Above a cloudy jar of brine
That floated greenish hard boiled eggs,
Beside a Schlitz beer waterfall
That told bar time (ten minutes fast),
A taxidermied Jack-A-Lope
With rabbit ears and tiny rack
Stared marble eyed into the dark.
“We don’t have...

Read More

In eighteen hundred ninety-three,
back in those silver-mining days,
a figure walked into Aspen town,
and it was the devil they say,
come looking for new souls to take.

He didn’t look like you would think,
the first time he appeared.
He...

Read More

'Twas an ominous moment when rode into town
To its marshal defy and outdraw and gun down
A notorious, murderous varmint named Slade 
Who had widows and orphans throughout the west made.

The next morning, as destined, they...

Read More

ACE CANNONS' CANON 

Through the morning, shimmering with colors that wavering, fade
from a desert where heat is a hue, and history's due
cactus and trees, knotted and sparse, a portrait some mad god must'f bade
into being,...

Read More

Under an amber sky, in a world of rock and cactus,
I feel like a fragment of a dream, feeding my desires from harsh stones and dry winds,
I, a dwindling minority, lost in the eternal dance...

Read More

Redmon Yost lived in Iowa
with mother and siblings,
the oldest of seven children
had just turned seventeen.
His pa had passed on two years back,
Redmon had gone to work,
punching cows at Holloway’s Ranch,
long hours made bones hurt,
but pay...

Read More

A man without a car is a poor fellow,
It’s like a cowboy without a horse, a lonely soul,
He doesn’t know what to do or who to visit in the ranches,
He walks alone in Los Angeles...

Read More

Meth Bomb, Homicide Village, 
Diverse Culture Site, Crown Town, 
Kendaltucky and Johnny Appleseed's Homestead; 
Tremendous and Troubling and Tortured, 
Town of the Long Face: 
They say you are explosive, and that is valid; I know...

Read More

Being the urban outlaw has its own rewards, especially when this vingilante-like person is helping the Marshall oficers capture the bad guys. It's just like a modern-day version of the Wild Wild West, except that...

Read More

Two cowpokes stagger to the saloon
Fighting because thems fighting words
Over a red parrot blocking their path
Pacing arrogantly before the bar entrance
Flapping green wings and screeching
The two men eventually find their way in
Order up a bottle...

Read More

i caught eyes with the man on the streets
cracked weathered hands 
beating upon the newspaper racks
to no tune except for the symphony in his head
he is lost from the looks of the external
but  internally...

Read More

She was a wily cigar chompin' gambler with the moniker of Poker Alice,
Renowned throughout the west for her skill in many a gamblin' palace!
Poker Alice had a good head for countin' and with her very...

Read More

The old, the new barely meet on the street of Bardstown road, yet diversity so unique, from Cherokee to the rarity, stepping forth in time with the antique structures surrounding you, from magnetic tape recordings...

Read More

At the foot uv Pikes Peak sprawls the old minin' town uv Cripple Creek.
They wuz nigh on fifty-thousand folks thar when minin' wuz at its peak!
Ol' Bob Womack, a cowpoke, struck gold in Poverty Gulch...

Read More