Cowboys

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.

NaPoWriMo April 2022 (Day 5)

Today I was to write a poem about a mythical person or creature doing something unusual – or at least something that seems unusual in relation to that person/creature.

While I may have skirted the “mythical person/creature” intent of this prompt into a mythical persona, my poem jibes with a contemporary American myth, my real life, and my reading of Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove and other books.

The Marlboro Men

Some didn’t smoke nor drink. Some hated horses.
First, for thirty years he was the
as soft as May she,
the lady who smoked, then she transitioned
into a tough, rugged, solitary, successful,
sometimes gay, mythical but authentic cowboy—
the sexiest of the sexist real men to face cancer.

Born with The Magnificent Seven’s memorable music,
growing and coming of age while riding
our cultural waves of the cold war, rock & roll,
civil and women’s rights; adverts were
icons of destiny for the decidedly deceived,
counters for conservative control
of our changing values.

The Big-un, the real one, a cowboy myth
to market coffin nails
and sell cowboy killers
to callow, naive boys who
never did and never will ride a horse
or be close enough to smell a cow.

The idolized hat, saddle, and boots of the Colorado rancher,
a friend to the duke, who took twelve years to
awaken to the wisdom of his being bought
to kill his own kin.

Was the demise of the man, the myth, and the cowboy the lie?
Was the image of what such men meant tarnished
by tobacco’s tar, nicotine, addiction, disease, and death?

Yes!

What men or women deserve to be our exemplars?
Are the anonymous quitters, the rebels, those
who turn and fight for right; are they, the proven people,
our legitimate, proper heroes? Or is true grit bogus?

Look both ways while riding the trails of western myth.
There is a truth to be found, but it’s now more than a hundred years,
and thousands of movies, ads, and commercials later.
Mind the gaps in the lies of marketing and advertising.

***

Too much to gloss: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlboro_Man

Sammi’s Weekender #144: sculpture

Cowboys look like Cooper, Wayne,
Marvin; or tall, thin Stewart. I seen
movies in the 50’s,
High Noon or Liberty Valance with
great songs.

Not s’posed to look like the sculpture.
The horse is right,
but the cowboy rock sittin’ is short,
round-faced with a big ‘stash and
no gun, holdin’ reins
lest Ol’ Buck runs off spooked.

The wrangler wears chaps and a jacket.
Reality ain’t movies, both’s art though.

Drop your blinders and look both ways.
Mind the gaps for, “The history of mankind is carried on the back of a horse.”