Photo by Red Shuttleworth, 8 July 2015
Before the Hand of
Spilled beer and Jesus-platitudes,
road-twisted cheap-brass rodeo trophy buckle...
And the pickup rattles... fencing tools and crushed beer cans.
Red wildfire-sun,
three roadside crosses in one downhill mile,
illegal burn barrel with a smokin' garden hose....
It's a drought-year nothin'.
Just sit sullen on a padded oak rockin' chair...
fire a nickel-plated seven-inch Colt revolver,
all the .45 rounds you can afford, into a neighbor's
center pivot section of gene-combo corn.
Spilled beer and Jesus-platitudes,
road-twisted cheap-brass rodeo trophy buckle...
And the pickup rattles... fencing tools and crushed beer cans.
Red wildfire-sun,
three roadside crosses in one downhill mile,
illegal burn barrel with a smokin' garden hose....
It's a drought-year nothin'.
Just sit sullen on a padded oak rockin' chair...
fire a nickel-plated seven-inch Colt revolver,
all the .45 rounds you can afford, into a neighbor's
center pivot section of gene-combo corn.
Before the Hand of: Red Shuttleworth, from Poet Red Shuttleworth, 8 July 2013
Photo by Red Shuttleworth, 14 July 2015
Collapse of Stacked-Up Details
You dream rattlers...
drinking caffeine-rich soda pop
from your dog's stainless steel supper bowl.
Dry grass... wildfire-weeks...
you quick-buy a nebulizer.
The Wolfhound wants to sit
for a strip of old-style photo booth portraits...
wants you to plunk the last car-change
quarters into some chewing-gummed slot.
A best friend drops into a diabetic blackout
while driving home with Chinese take-out,
crashes into a parked dildo-Lexus... totals it.
Not much later comes the small stroke...
loss of vision in the left eye...
the one that best saw a ninety-plus
baseball coming 60-feet from the bump.
Blue haze... mourning doves
forever in nonlinear time and space...
wildfire smoke and bird-screech.
Age seventy's residue....
You're just another dust devil.
You dream rattlers...
drinking caffeine-rich soda pop
from your dog's stainless steel supper bowl.
Dry grass... wildfire-weeks...
you quick-buy a nebulizer.
The Wolfhound wants to sit
for a strip of old-style photo booth portraits...
wants you to plunk the last car-change
quarters into some chewing-gummed slot.
A best friend drops into a diabetic blackout
while driving home with Chinese take-out,
crashes into a parked dildo-Lexus... totals it.
Not much later comes the small stroke...
loss of vision in the left eye...
the one that best saw a ninety-plus
baseball coming 60-feet from the bump.
Blue haze... mourning doves
forever in nonlinear time and space...
wildfire smoke and bird-screech.
Age seventy's residue....
You're just another dust devil.
Collapse of Stacked-Up Details: Red Shuttleworth, from Poet Red Shuttleworth, 14 July 2013
Photo by Red Shuttleworth, 12 July 2015
The Core of Our Moon is Iron
Miles traveled are points in the game of mistakes.
The sun rises bronzy... soon turns brimstone-yellow.
The little faces the sky makes jiggle and jump...
and it's a joke for some dry-humor god.
And within recall:
the rumble of fractured bottom ground,
rock climbing rock to new elevation.
Lily skin, lavender shawl, tight greenish jeans,
Go... we should go somewhere. She also said,
Nobody really feeds the heart-sprawled...
certainly not little banjo players. On the corners.
You sit, flask of bourbon-water: the sun thrill-rises sulfuric
through basalt dust and grass-fire, sagebrush smoke.
The Core of Our Moon is Iron: Red Shuttleworth, from Poet Red Shuttleworth, 12 July 2013
Photo by Red Shuttleworth, 29 June 2015
Photo by Red Shuttleworth, 28 June 2015
Photo by Red Shuttleworth, 23 June 2015
Photo by Red Shuttleworth, 24 June 2015
Photo by Red Shuttleworth, 21 June 2015
Photo by Red Shuttleworth, 20 June 2015
Photo by Red Shuttleworth, 17 June 2015
Photo by Red Shuttleworth, 22 June 2015
Photo by Red Shuttleworth, 20 June 2015
8 comments:
Blackie and the Rodeo Kings: North
I've been going to school on Red's poetry for a while now. The man takes a bloody good photo too.
Your North is the same as our South. Tell me if I'm wrong.
You're right.
These guys are from even further North, in fact.
Hamilton, Ontario, eh.
...
...
Alex and Ruben came... to clean the carpet
I realized "you rock" is the... highest compliment
when I walked to the backyard... to piss
it was exactly like a comet between two planets.
...
...
Yes... remember the lady with the tattoos
she published a tract... on housing bats
found out about her suicide
could not talk...
to myself about
undone communication
...
...
Sitting in garden, drinking "poor man's"
looking forward to bonding with my wife
Accused of pontificating... Am I a pontiff?
I give it to god but... wait for change
...
...
Yes. I think we may be getting there. Thank you Vincent. And keep the change! Nora has just sent along a picture of a perfect cat's paw print found on a Roman tile roof on Gloucestershire. Brum is still more North than South. Cecil is still dead, Nimrod the Dentist is still missing.
On the other hand, Red writes,"... poems of mine from this very dry country, this year when I get up and go outside with Peaches the first thing I do is scan for smoke. Always smoke. This morning to the West. Another fire in or around Quincy? Peaches hates to walk on blacktop once the temperature rises to ninety. This morning around 7:30 it was below seventy and Peaches was so happy and she frolicked around me as we walked a mile on the disused old Ephrata Road west of the airport and junior college. I kept my eyes down for any appearance of any Mr. Rattlesnake. We had one encounter a few weeks ago, but I think it must've been a bull snake."
Blistering.
The perfect word.
Cecil...yes, Cecil
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