Hardly anyone I went to high school with reads my blog, but if they did they’d be rolling their eyes right now.
I may have mentioned my obsession with poetry in a previous post… and I believe I also mentioned how absurdly god-awful my poems were. What I haven’t discussed yet, was my perpetual fascination with cowboy-themed poems. (I was reading a lot of Zane Grey at the time.)
There was just something about the romance of riding horseback, kicking up dust and adventuring into the great wide nowhere with nothing but a bandana around your neck and a revolver at your hip.
It grabbed hold of my heart and hung on tight – as it did so many writers before me. And as such, my crude attempts at poetry began to assume the tropes of the Wild West.
In the next Throwback Thursday series, I’ll recount a few of the poems here… as long as I have your assurance, dear reader, that you won’t judge them.
(Note: None of them are titled. I’ve always struggled with titling things – a trait that has followed me into my current writing career. Also, I know I change tenses and I use adjectives instead of adverbs. I’m sorry, okay?)
Late at night, in the dark and the wet
When the light is teased and shunned,
There rides a man weighted down with regret
And the thick metal sheath of his gun.
He slumps on his saddle, tired and worn
His silhouette not but a clod:
A sorrowful cowboy whose jacket is torn
And whose morals are tragically flawed.
Yes tragically flawed are the morals of he,
Who sits in his hollow, on heaps of debris,
And grins as he waits for his poor enemy,
Yes, flawed are the morals of he.
A labyrinthine cavern, just miles away
Was where he’d established his lair.
He had good intentions, although I daresay
That his victim had hardly a prayer.
The hapless approached as his murderer waited
And as he arrived at the den
Sat a man with a pistol, all conscience abated.
A shot rang out once – then again.
Yes, two shots rang out that night, painfully clear,
And out of the cavern, two bodies appear,
The live one discernibly bearing a sneer,
Yes, the shots rang out painfully clear.
And now as he rides, he is ridden with shame
And can taste acrid guilt on his breath,
For he knows that he deserves all of the blame
For that miserable, undeserved death.
Happy Throwback Thursday, world!
The Nutshell Version 
Susie ~ THIS is WONDERFUL! My Lord ~ Your writing so very, very GOOD!!! … Great, really!! xoxo Auntie
Some nice imagery there 🙂
Oh, Susiegirl!!! I read this poem and it is wonderful! I would like to share it with one of our closest friends, who knows your Mother, and who has earned his vast wealth in the southern paper mill business. He grew up in the south, but lives close to us in Lake Oswego. He, too, has a fascination with the cowboy life, and owns among many other things, an Old Western Town in Oregon, which includes a tavern, a stagecoach, his cattle ranch, and many other things cowboy. He has written several best selling books about big business, but has, as well, written novels about the western cowboy. His true love, I believe wholeheartedly, is the old west, and this poem would bring a smile to his face 😉 xoxo Auntie
In that case, share away! I’d love to swap trail stories with him. 😉 (Between you and me, the next two “Throwback Thursday” posts are going to be cowboy poems as well. It was quite a little phase.)
I WILL SAVE READING HIM THIS POEM UNTIL I HAVE IN MY HANDS THE POSTS FROM THE NEXT TWO THROWBACK THURSDAYS!
(I think I like that phase!)