My challenge today was to write a poem that starts from a regional phrase, particularly one to describe the weather. I am not a native Texan, but my wife and children are. I couldn’t do just one because the Texas culture is overflowing with verbal and cultural clever terms and phrases. The dialects for these (and there are so many more) shift, depending upon which part of the state you are in, and whether you’re in a city, small town, or rural setting. Disclosure, I can talk like this and at times, I do.

Boy, howdy!!
Looky o’r yonder,
I could sit still for that,
But she’s in a horn tossin’ mood.

Where y’all from?
It’s so dry Ima spittin’ cotton
Here abouts, it’s drier
than a popcorn fart.

Got all gussied up ta
go shoot out the lights,
but just cuz a chicken got wings,
don’t mean it can fly.

It’s hot, y’all!
Hotter ‘n a two-dollar pistol,
Like a billy goat in a pepper patch.
Yes’m, it’s hotter ‘n blue blazes.

Tomorr’a they’ll be frost on the pumpkin,
cold as my ex-wife’s heart,
I mean, cold as hell
with the furnace gone out.

Y’all come,
Ya hear?
Ain’t no butt ugly,
we all just sweetness an light.

Lord willin’ and
the creek don’t rise.
Speakin’ of suckin’ hind tit,
how ‘bout them Cowboys?

Y’all oughta be a-smilin’
like a jack-ass eatin’ briars.

©Bill Reynolds, 4/10/2019

Look both ways and listen close.
Mind the gaps in logic and teeth, they’ll tell you something.