Author: Bill

Cowboy UP – NaPo 2025 Day Twelve

Today I was to try writing a poem inspired by Wallace Stevens’ verse, “Peter Quince at the Clavier.”  My poem was to reference myth, legend, and/or other well-known stories. Not to get too complex, this poem was also to feature wordplay (including rhyme), mix formal and informal language, and contain multiple sections that “play with” the theme. I was also to incorporate at least one abstract concept such as desire, sorrow, pride, or whimsy. Whew. Happy Saturday, y’all.

Pardon Me, Messers. Dobie and Grey

  I 

Please, do not get me started
debunking the hard drinking, sharp shooting, dude
with a solid heart. A good, God-fearing man of independence and
self-reliance (but they could live in conditions most of us couldn’t).

Today, cowboy is a status symbol
consisting of some form of horseless truck
bigger than a dad-blamed Greyhound bus.
While real, the Buffalo Bill we knew was bullshit.

Cattle drives were real and so were the cowboys.
Black ones, Mexican ones, and po’ white ones.
But this is the age of fiction where facts and history
may just get you arrested by modern day SS of 1939.

C&W music aside, the only cowboys known for singing
came later when actors sang about those real boys,
home on the range and yodeling and all that.
I don’t know how they felt about the brand.

           II

But cowboy songs, then and now, are all about
desires for things like water, food, and a decent scout.
And some boom-boom along the way at the cat house,
maybe a sarsaparilla with a dash of cherry while out and about.

Who today can afford the wrong cow in the wrong place?
Lawyers and doctors and candlestick makers.
Real cowpokes made for silly jokes, but those are
the myths and legends, like Pecos Bill and Judge Roy Bean (also real),

were much more fun and interesting
than the boring factual truth, that
your ropin’ and cookin’ skills meant more
than shooting or the Marlboro Man himself.

Justice? If he stole your hoss, ya hung ‘im.
We learnt that watchin’ Lonesome Dove on TV.
And the Hat Creek Cattle Company, heroes of days past,
who stole most of the cattle they pushed to Montana.

But if you want them ol’ boys to look at you funny,
talk to them about ideas like love, justice
(it was legal to shoot Apache, Cheyenne, or Sioux),
freedom, and what happiness meant to them.

    III

But still, we love the stories, the art,
the concepts of the rugged pioneer who
tipped his hat and killed all the bad guys
for, and to protect, our wives and our daughters.

Men who made the world a better place
by stealing, lying, cheating, and murdering.
For better or worse, our past is what it is.
However we may feel about it.

It’s fun to ride alone. To be glorified.
To be the story told to children
to make them better people. But
only cows and chickens love vegetarians.

Look both ways and enjoy the stories.
But mind the gap between reality and fantasy.
While a man hears what he wants to hear and a woman believes
what she wants to believe,
many of both live to seek the truth.

Say It and Play It, Billy – NaPo 2025 Day Eleven

Today I was to write a poem that incorporates song lyrics – ideally, incorporating them as opposing phrases or refrains (I didn’t). Though not specifically prompted, I felt like the poem should be a “loose” villanelle which, like the example, doesn’t rhyme (much).

Just to Feel Good for a While

To forget about life for a while
We hear the songs and drink the wine
and you got us feeling alright

Everyday life is one more trial
We feel abused by the tyranny of time
To forget about life for a while

We sit and we cry when we sing
Sadness and resistance break down
And you get us to feeling alright

We laugh until it hurts in a good way
Looking forward to this now all week
To forget about reality for a while

It seemed so much like just yesterday
When love, I thought, was here to stay
And your song and the grog got us to feeling alright

With midnight closing in
As we feel it and see it all in the air tonight
To forget, for now, about life’s pain for a while
And your song got us feeling alright

Look both ways on the hardest of days to find a break in the clouds.
Mind the gaps and learn the words of all the songs and poems you love.

Silly Street Songs – NaPo 2025 Day Ten

Day dix found a napowrimo dot net challenge for me to write a poem that uses alliteration and punning. That’s what she said. I could include words I find troublesome to spell (there are many) and one where the meaning is wonky for me.

 A man walks down the street

Steven strongly strides seven steps
neither up nor down, never noticing
how Candice curves create cardio calls from cool cats
among and amid amusing amassing amateurs.

Tourists to me.

I shoot six street shots, some suggestive, startling strangers,
but buskers buttress bongs and banjoes.

Suddenly, Steven stops and stares at Simone Sunlight Someone
shooting several subtle series of snaps.
Suddenly, some sucker sees and shoots.
I surrender to staring strangers strongly suggesting something serious.

Like this poem.

Look both ways at amusing language and funny faces that look and sound similar.
Mind the gaps and please chew with your mouth closed but your eyes open.

Rhyme Time – NaPo 2025 Day Nine

Today’s challenge is to write a poem that uses rhymes, but unlike yesterday, without adhering to specific line lengths. That’s it.

The Pedagogue Bullfrog

Biology class.
Dissection Day.

The stink in the classroom would make ya cry. Remember?
When we were there to slay already dead frogs, not toads.

I think.
Step by disgusting step we cut the carcass open to expose wads and globs
of all the things I learned in high school: heart, lung, stomach.

But the smell is what I remember best.
Formaldehyde, Baby.

Like in the beer in the Nam,
A key component in dead humans when used to embalm.

But gizzards do not abound in and around Bullfrogs. Just chickens and turkeys
dissected at home by Mom for celebrations of life.

Of “all the crap I learned in high school it’s a wonder
I can think at all—but I can read the writing on the wall,”
and a good witch can read the petri dish entrails.

Look both ways and hear the moan of the bull
because those frogs are not an endangered species.
Mind the gaps and touch your face before licking your lips. Embrace the stink.

Pretty Little Love Songs – NaPo 2025 Day Eight

Today’s challenge was to write a meditative ghazal (I’m not a fan) poem in the form of a love song. A bunt is not a home run, but it still gets the job done.

Make it Real or Forget About It

You’re the melody I would never forget
You’re the forest of fantasy I forgot to forget

We don’t need the shabby old habits anymore
You say standing ovations we love not to forget

But if you’re willing to play our love’s game
This love is something we will never forget

Some kind of magic is inside you for me
Lying in bed beside one another we cannot forget

I want to show you the room in my heart
Imprints of history we two will never forget.

Look both ways and try something new, even if it tastes like tripe.
Mind the gaps because not every poetic form from other cultures
suits us better than others.

Why Not Art? – NaPo 2025 Day Seven

Today I am prompted to write “kind of” a self-portrait poem wherein I explain why I am not an object of art. Additionally; I should include a fake fact and a highly unlikely comparison.

objet d’art

A can of soup was not art.
Wait now, the can may be but not the soup.
Tell the chief her food is not art
and you may invoke a visceral emotional response
from them (pronoun problems today)
about his grossly gristly
chicken fried steak found at some greasy spoon
somewhere in the middle of Texas or Montana.

Intent counts in sin and art. Fuck for effect.
I am the conscious effort, like the fork, push pin,
or skin covered hairless fat over brittle bone and
Weird Andy Dubya paints me as a Brillo box
for which some fool pops millions. I’m not that.

But is it art? Am I?
Am I that posed and canned portraiture photo of me
p-shopped to make me artfully handsome and young
soliciting a salacious feeling from someone
who practices the high art of pornography?
I am not that kind of art, thank you, Reverend.

We all love being objectified, of evoking
an aesthetic or emotional response
from the neighbor’s horny wiener dog down the road which
is not art. The road I mean, not the cat. I mean dog.
But maybe, could be, should be transformed
into a painting of an old hammer, which I am also not, but
a can of soup is. Art’s weird if you ask me,
which you were not and I’m not saying.

Look both ways and up at a ceiling full of shit-filled condoms and call it art
because it evokes within you an emotional response.
Mind the gaps where function follows form, and a poem is a form of expression
but isn’t art.

Hot Chow – NaPo 2025 Day Six

To determine today’s NaPo prompt, I randomly selected a number from 1 to 10. I picked ten. Then I scrolled down to find a table of 10 rows and 4 columns. At the row corresponding to 10, the first cell to the right gave me the name of an edible item: cilantro. That was what my poem was to be about. The next two cells had words that were to be used in the flavor-descriptive poem. To see the entire prompt click here.

Cilantro

I don’t know when it came into my life.
Probably after I met my wife because
if it wasn’t meat with mashed potatoes
and some form of bean,
I had never tasted it.

Two things provided for expansion
of my sense of taste and flavor,
including smell. Marriage
and my military life. Chow halls
didn’t care, but they also did.
I actually like liver and spinach
(sorry Mom).

It goes in with other stuff,
Where would salsa, soups, guacamole,
and other dishes be without it? Sure,
there is parsley, dill, and basil,
but they are not the same.

Where would be the fresh citrusy
and floral flavor? That peppery tang
we find in and among the Mexican gang.

If it tastes like soap, there is no hope.
Genetics rule. Thanks to a gene
called OR6A2 for that
and eat something else.

For the rest of us, we enjoy the
gentle chip drip into the culinary saucy sink.
Good food is more than you think.

Look both ways and learn to love the food.
Mind the gaps and pity the picky eaters.

Musical Notation – NaPo 2025 Day Five

A Saturday NaPo table prompted me to compose a poem given inspiration from a musical notation of my choosing from a list of 21. Then, I was supposed to select a musical genre from another list of 21. Finally, I was to use in said poem one or more words I picked from a third column of 21. You can see the entire table which was Bogarted from an old Twitter account by clicking here.

My selections were: “lord have mercy;” folk song; and bones, butterflies, + banquet.

Pay to Play

I am not a musician.
No instrument can I play.
My singing’s not worth the price of admission.
Not even in church while
surrounded by singing Baptists on the Lord’s Day.

I love music. I wanna be
all those things. Just good enough
will satisfy me.

When I hear it, the many from way back then,
when, lord have mercy, a folk song
written and sung during the genre revival,

gets into my bones
I can get butterflies. I become
the man-boy I was with hair and zits,
now my playlist becomes
a veritable banquet. Then I sigh,
and I wonder why
they don’t get it.
Like rain they hear it but they get no feel.
Frankly, they just get wet.

Look both ways but remember; your song is yours, your music is born into your soul.
It matters not what others think, this is your thing.
Mind the gaps but you’ll never explain not knowing what was for lunch,
yet you still know the words to songs from fifty years ago.

 

Living with Art – NaPo 2025 Day Four

Today the queen of the NaPo realm promulgated the task of writing poems about living with art.

While photography is widely recognized as a form of art, that status has also been debated with some calling it a craft or skill, which it certainly is, like dance or music, and some others arguing that it is a powerful medium for artistic expression. I stand with the latter.

Every Day

When I first step into ma chambre d’art
it’s dark with shelves holding hundreds of books,
and all four walls displaying one hundred LP record covers.
Other albums that proudly placed display my taste
in music and cover art are set on shelves
or stacked in cabinets for future play or display.

I see my friends every day. The music. The memories.
Roy Orbison and Roger Miller share a corner to my left
with Jim Croce, Judy Collins, and an artful cover of John Denver’s.
Next is a Rolling Stones “Sticky Fingers” jeans cover
with a working zipper in front and some fine buns in back.

Up front, Merle glares right as he and Willie play
Pancho and Lefty, two down from Honeysuckle Rose.
Linda Ronstadt and Janis Ian are scattered about
the one hundred along with Peter, Paul, & Mary.

The Blues Brothers was a musical movie, an attitude, a look,
and featured John Lee Hooker with “Boom Boom.”
Hooker weighs in heavy in the book, Images of the Blues,
an album-cover size tome about blues singers.

The northeast corner of the room
belongs to nine Carly Simon albums.
My own (original) “No Secrets” was a career jump for Carly with one
of many, often suggestive photos by her brother Peter.
Her smile, mouth, eyes, and voice;
the stories told in songs she wrote,
artful albums that keep the beat going.
Ask what’s his name.

From the south wall Bob Seger looks north at his
“Stranger in Town” reflection
next to Travis and Sedaka.

Glaring at my right-side profile
are a well-dressed Neil Diamond, Gordon Lightfoot in jeans and sandals,
the Kingston Trio, Streisand and Kristofferson kissing
for “A Star is Born,” and there’s cover art by Joni Mitchell (Miles of Aisles).

This album art, commercial and artful, the music within the grooves,
the display by me, and even Melanie and her roller skate key
are about them and me and maybe you.

Come on in. Have a seat.
Let’s talk about music and its many genres,
about the singers
and song writers,
about the stories,
their lives and ours and what we share.

Let’s not forget The Beatles, Eagles, War, Boston,
Chicago, Santana, and Pablo Cruise.
In my room (The Beach Boys).

Look both ways for art you can live with.
See it, hear it, feel it with touch and emotion, and pressure.
Mind the gaps in the grooves but keep your taste for music and art alive.

Rock Poem Metaphor NaPo 2025 Day Three

Day three of NaPo prompts me to follow the easy style of Frank O’Hara and to write a poem that obliquely explains why I am a poet and not some other kind of artist.

I looked. Oblique means not straightforward: indirect, obscure, devious, or underhanded. Perhaps metaphorically?

Poemhenge

Like most,
as a child I found rocks and stones interesting
to see, to hold, to gather, and to throw.
There were cool ones for holding
and some for skipping on water.
Some were hot rocks. Jocks protected stones.

I didn’t know any of the names.
Fools gold wasn’t gold or diamonds
but was filled with glittery sparkles.

Rocks had formations.
Many were famous.
Rocks and stones were even in songs.
And in idioms like rock solid
or your stone-cold heart,
or the millstone around your neck.

Eventually, old stone makers interested me
and new stone makers challenged me.
And the colors and cutters of gemstones
like emeralds, sapphires, rubies, and diamonds.

As I grew, my view of stones got more solid.
Famous rock formations attracted me,
I wanted to imitate the creators.
In the gym I used soft rock like talc
as I listened to the rock music and dreamed
of the rock candy mountain.

Rich people wore and collected rocks.
They called them jewels and gems
but I could not always tell you why.

Later, maturity took ahold of me
and I found my fit, even as a fossil,
to make rock and stone creations of my own.
Polishing stones. Stepping stones.
Stumbling blocks are rocks.
My mind one stone quarry among many quarries.
I walked the limestone line on cordoba cream—
noticing colors, styles, and finishes.

One day I collected some of my stones.
I trimmed and polished them. I included
abrasive stones, message stones, smooth stones,
and made them ready for display to the world.
And I named them all poems.

Look both ways and if you see Frank O’Hara, tell him I want to be a painter too.
Mind the gaps, especially as you traverse the rocks, then stop, sit, have a “J.”
Mind what the poets have to say.

Note: “J” is from the Paul Simon song “Late in the Evening.”