[Charlie Southerland]

Spaghetti Western


The man with no name became the high plains
drifter shooting Italian bad guys day
after day for taking his soul away.
The good, the bad, and the ugly still stains
the screen at night and gives me stomach pains.
They paint the town red much to my dismay
and parade a midget, amid gunplay,
around on an ass; no, it never rains
(have you ever noticed?) Not one soul leaves
the set, they are recycled like the suns
and yet you never see the actors sheaves
of tongues in cheeks, and with one last breath
of tortured confusion, the whole town runs
(from Clint, linguini - spined cowards! ) from death.

[Jayne Osborn]

I'm surprised Jayne overlooked "planes." I thought homonyms like that weren't allowed. I've been avoiding them myself.

I enjoyed Rob's poem and obviously missed "planes", but that word won't be allowed.

We've been given the go-ahead by Tessa to take certain liberties - but don't wander into "taking the p*** territory", OK?

Jayne

[John Whitworth]

If everybody here sends in a poem it will probably double Tessa's usual crop.

[RCL]

Stagecoach Mary

Unlike some storied cowboys of the plains,
Mary Fields’ Montana makes her day.
A liberated slave, south far away,
she’s rare in white Cascade, where smoker’s stains
on six-foot girls are rare. She also pains
a few by swearing and bearing guns. LeMay,
the liberal mayor, lets her drink and play
at cards in his saloon. Despite harsh rains,
she beats out men for stagecoach routes and leaves,
a first for women, making rounds through suns’
bite and devil winds, transporting sheaves
of mail and sundries. Through laughs and whiskey breath,
she smokes, spins yarns of wolves on nighttime runs
through snow—her knife and shotgun dealing death.

[Martin Elster]

Excellent, Ralph! Out of curiosity, how did you find out the name of the mayor of Cascade? Or did you make up the name (LeMay)? Poetic license?

Roger - Your agoraphobic one is excellent, too. An interesting take and quite poetic.

You both, obviously, did your research.

It's interesting, Roger, that you have these allusions to death:

It pains
my sense to see the buds reborn in May
and know how brief the game it is they play.

and

death alone can cure my soul of death.

Because what Wiki says about it is

Another common associative disorder of agoraphobia is necrophobia, the fear of death. The anxiety level of agoraphobics often increases when dwelling upon the idea of eventually dying, which they consciously or unconsciously associate with being the ultimate separation from their mortal emotional comfort and safety zones and loved ones, even for those who may otherwise spiritually believe in some form of divine afterlife existence.

[Ann Drysdale]

Pssst - Rogerbob...

"and know how brief the game it is they play."

I think it makes better sense if you replace the definite article with the indefinite - "how brief a game..."

What do you think?

[Martin Elster]

Turkey Vulture

Riding the rising thermals of the plains,
majestic trash can of the skies, all day
I sniff out stiffs. At night I drift away
to dream of all the carrion that stains
the interstate, although I’m quite at pains
to say how fine it reeks. I wake. This May
morning looks great for courting. Longings play
and surge in me like sudden summer rains
and, as I take to flight, elation leaves
me with an urge to pass the furthest suns
and catch my girl. We flirt amid soft sheaves
of cloud. We flap and dive and, in a breath,
we couple. As the season warms and runs
toward fall, we’ll teach our brood to locate death.

[Charlotte Innes]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

If everybody here sends in a poem it will probably double Tessa's usual crop.

Holy moly! This is quite a thread. Did I count right--did Martin Elster alone write 14 of these poems? And I know others have written quite a few!

I wish I could do this. I'm having so much fun reading them. Apropos of what's been said on various threads, I think being funny--and being serious and funny in the same poem--and doing it well is the hardest thing to do.

I suppose I could try a purely "serious" one.... whatever that means!

Charlotte

[Martin Elster]

Wow, Charlotte, you actually counted my cracks at this? I, myself, lost track. OK, I just counted thirteen. (By the way, I've revised every one of them so far, but now feel that a few have jelled reasonably well.)

If you do one, Charlotte, I'd love to see what you come up with, whether it be serious or comic (or both at the same time). I'm glad you found this thread fun to read. So did I.

My question would now be: how many of these could one rightly enter? Were I to submit my baker's dozen (though I probably won't), wouldn't that be a bit too much for poor Tessa? According to Jayne's advice, I should send each in a separate email. But wouldn't it now be better to send them all in one?

Jayne? John? Any suggestions?

[Charlie Southerland]

On Keats

I would like to think of your life as plains,
unremarkable as the livelong day-
some unreachable thing so far away,
but that would be a lie, no? And it stains
me black inside, like you. I died in May
but God has brought me back - He likes to play
with me, a toy, like cloudbursts when it rains.
Our friends watch us toil, marked, as green as leaves.
We laugh and frown, compared to burnt out suns-
our backs are taut with heat from shocking sheaves
in golden fields as peasants, out of breath,
the last one taken when the reaper runs
his course, how life consumes us so, in death.