Stetson Poems | Examples

Boot Scootin' Angels

On Tuesday night, you could hear music playing
old country songs, I knew right from the start
I listened to, all the words they were saying
with stories of an aching, breaking heart

I never knew, there were boot scootin’ angels
all dressed in their mid-western, clothes and styles
in that old bar, filled with root-tootin’ angels
no prairie for at least, 4,000 miles

On Tuesday night, when I heard music playing
old country songs, I knew from long ago
I sang along, to the words they were saying
and felt I’d stepped into, a rodeo 

That Mary-Lou, was a boot scootin’ angel
all dressed in her mid-western, clothes and style
she was the queen, of those root-tootin’ angels
with her Stetson hat and Texan smile.

if I was a sheriff

If I was a sheriff
I would wear a gleaming gold star
A holster with silver twin six-shooters
You would be afraid of my sequined Stetson
As I march up and down the street
In my fancy embroidered braided cowboy boots
I would befriend Indians
If I was a sheriff

Cher Fair Queen

her face is chiseled but not hard like her father’s
Cher wears a black Stetson with a silver band
is she smoking? Is that allowed in this bar?
I note her makeup, put on by an expert hand

Has she a fashion consultant?
Because she never looked this gorgeous before
I hear she is running for fair queen
She has my vote

Never have I seen her look more beautiful
And she has always been a looker
Even as a six-year-old, I knew she was special
She turns and looks my way. Gives me a wink.

I am excited to say that I know her.
She has facets of personalities and is fun.
Cher, I hope you get queen, I think.
And she does.

Just Cuz'Uh Her Face

.

                          Just cuz'uh her face
                     i were will'n to love her rest
 
                          She wuz dressed like 
                            the Pinkerton man
                                     until
            the auburn locks rolled down her trench
              when she removed that well salted
                                Stetson hat

                 the rules were about to change

                The rustle uv her copper stallion
                        and the smell uv that
                             new barn hay
         
                                    yep
                        just cuz'uh her face

Coconuts

COCONUTS
A long time ago, 60 years plus I am sorry to say
My grandfather gave me a 78 record to play
On my Dansette player I eagerly did one day
I heard coconuts in the weirdest way.
It went clippety clop, clippety clop
Just like a slow donkey that didn’t stop
Throughout a cowboy kind of song
With an American drawl slow and long.
It was about a mouse at a pantry door
Who had been scratching for a year or more
And when he got through, he would be mighty sore
There weren’t a darn thing in there
Life gets tedious, don’t it.
So that was the song with the coconut clop
It conjured up the wild west with a coconut flop
A Stetson and a cupboard as empty as could be
With a coconut sound for an old gee gee.

Footles of Bands

work in progress
Footle of Country Bands

S**t Kickers/slide guitar
cowboys 
Stetson 

John Denver/folk music
“Thank God”
fiddler


Footle Of Rock Bands

Guitar strings/stockings
steely 
nylons

Big hair/bands
hairspray
glamour 

Roadies/Hotel
seconds
trashed rooms

Thrash/Punk Rock
Bangers
Façade

Growing Tradition

  Growing the fruits of your labor in Socorro county
  Around here they call it New Mexico true
  Down in Lemitar you can get the best of the best
  The warm days' and cool nights, the fields of green chile grew

  This crop has become known worldwide in places afar
  Dedicated day and night to it being a successful harvest
  Long hours and true love of this way of life they embrace
  The chile, beautiful and mature, it's the hot days' of August

  Sacks of burlap full to the top begin the journey across the state
  Crack of the burners, metal cylinders turn, roasted green chile fills the air
  This smell, it is nothing short of heaven on earth
  Our call to fame with a little New Mexico flare

  The season is short, late Autumn wind blows the dust off a cowboys boots
  The chile turns deep red now, the last of the season
  The ground is bare as I take one last look across the land
  The Zia on our flag gives me pride, that's my reason

  Why things happen, well who's to say
  Perhaps the fields will be green again someday
  A hurt in my heart, I lower my Stetson and walk away
  The fields belong to spirit now, looking in the distance I see the rain

Each Passing Clouds

The sailing ships above my head,
unimageable shapes navigating through,
as I walk the lonely stretch of the beach.
Memories stir chapters of the past.

I always wondered what my life would have been
if I took a different course, then the one I took.

That day the colors fanned out and whiffed
of redolence unmistakable that Spring had arrived.
The sound of the train had wakened me up that day
from thought as I waited for him at the station.
A considerable distance, listing to recurrent rumbling roar
of the train's vibration snaking on the rail score,
metal wheels rhythmic clatters over the rail ties the closer it neared.

He stood still for a minute before he stepped off the train.
He was tall, alluring sculpted body, in a dark brown suit
and Stetson hat, short lace up Oxford shoes; a gentleman.
He was a man I had met while in the service.

We spent a couple of weeks enjoying each other’s company, 
but the joy of it wasn’t enough.
He decided to reenlist again, applied for Officer Candidate School. 
I didn’t see him again.

His image still imprinted in my mind.



3/8/2023

Marlboro Man Mirage

somber handsome Marlboro man on a painted stallion
a mirage has appeared in the dust bowl wearing chaps
his worn Stetson is pulled low,
he outshines the cover of a juicy romance novel
I do not know his name but he takes my breath away
he rides to the west

Hicksville Part I

In my mind I'm a cowpoke
Glass of jack in my hand
Watching Texas Two step
To a Texas Swing Band.
I've got slim line Levi's jeans
And a black Stetson hat
and tooled leather boots
I'm a real cool cat.
There's no jingling spurs
Or pistols slapping leather
Just the sound of the couples
Dancing close together.

This place is Hicksville,
Any state, Western USA
The time is the present
The date is today.
No hitching rail of horses
Ears twitching in the breeze
Just a big concrete car park
Full of dusty SUVs.
As the last notes of swing
Slide down past my ears,
I open my eyes
And reality appears.

No glass of Jack
Just a mug of cold tea;
No roomful of dancers
Just lonely old me.
There'll come a time
But I don't know when
I'll close my eyes
And go back there again.
Slumped in my chair
I know I'll soon find
Hicksville, USA, filed
Bright and clear in my mind

Cowboying Along

It's been a long ride;
beneath me a phantom horse wheezes
its lungs blown.
I chose a slow death
not some youthful suicide.

Illness and a life
misused
took its pound of flesh,
the surgeons knives
were never far from my body.

If I had a Stetson
I would tip it to a fair lady
and ride slowly on,
but I have just this keyboard,
and it does not play
long symphonies any more,
just brief words
that pluck a few
faltering heart-strings.

The sheriff of despair
has chased me
all along this long trail,
so far I am ahead
and so is my horse,
just.

Inflation

There’s a global inflation problem
everywhere lungs are puffed up
heads are swollen.

Balloons increase in volume overnight.
The cost of rubber bands
has been stretched to its limits.

We recall sadly the heady days of deflation,
when shrinkage gave us more space
to spread, to drink our fill
of a less bloated air.

Politicians and pronouns
are loudly popping
empty suits and Stetson hats
billow and blow more than we can
know.

We see the mushrooming clouds
of bluster and bluff from afar.
The world pumps on way too hard
continents expand beyond their land.

The sky busts out of its high wide window.
Soon we shall see
how it will be before the big bang
as we escalate into fat flatulent globs
and awfully slow, bulky, bouncing blimps.

Honky Tonk Hero

A voice of gravel wrapped in velvet
Bringing a warmth to every song,
Laid back and gentle as
Every track moved along.
He looked so tall and lanky in
Photographs of his early years
With the trade mark white Stetson
Perched so precisely above his ears.

Rainbow at Midnight
Walking the Floor Over You
Have You Ever Been Lonely
Filipino Baby, Seaman’s Blues

Somewhere in every track
I seemed to hear a smile, 
Simple songs of the time
With no trickery or guile. 
I think his music still as fresh
As those fifty years ago or more
When I first listened to the music of
Ernest Tubb, The Texas Troubadour.

A Hat Full

*Image of Ten Gallon Stetson by IBA.

A Hat Full

A cowboy with a ten-gallon hat,
Seen a spittoon and gave it a spat,
A girl screamed, "That's my vase!",
She then frowned in his face,
And stepped on his hat and made it flat.

2022 May 07
*1st Place*
High Noon
~~Joseph May: Judged 2022 May 08

RZ, HMS: 9,9,6,6,9.

Dont Slap a Copper With a Kipper

[Youtube clip attached as the source of my ‘copper through your
letter box line... and because I just love the song!]

Don’t slap a copper with a kipper
Don’t catch your todger in your zipper
Don’t put the peas on if you cannot watch the pot
And if your wife should ask don’t say the weather girl is hot

And don’t play Twister with a hippo
Or light a firecracker with a zippo
Don’t date a sure bet if you’ve got holes in your socks
Don’t try to post a copper through your letter box
For that will be a squeeze but you won’t get past his boots
Don’t pull you’re little sister’s hair out by the roots
Don’t hold a bank up with a plastic BB gun
Don’t ski down K2 just because it sounds like fun

Don’t drive a Datsun in Stetson
And don’t wipe your visor with a wet one
And don’t quarrel with your wife, or venom she will hurl
She’ll say why don’t you run off with your little weather girl

And don’t dress like Lennon at a Rolling Stones revival
If you have inside your head the notion of survival

• Short Stetson Poems
• Famous Stetson Poems
• Best Stetson Poems
• Read Stetson Poems
• Long Stetson Poems
• Stetson Quotes