The death of a moon cowboy

I am a somewhat-youth with ideas and thoughts and too many dreams that sometimes overflow as these little dribblings from my fingertips. I guess you can try to collect and capture them.


Wednesday, October 11, 2006

The birth

Another day come and gone.
I call it ten, you call it twenty-seven.
Predictions of 'inevitable acting to fit the part',
will come true, and I won't profit,
won't see any of the so-called good.

Keep to the right and ignore the others, you said.
And you will arrive in due time.
But I never meant to travel;
that destination was a ruse--
a trick for leading slaves in on chains, under the
winter branches and full moon shadows.

And it's cold again because autumn never came,
and the bedspread lays stiff on my ankles
like a lake of ice,
my head crooked against the dying bedboards
arms clutching themselves.

It wasn't fear or shame that shut my eyes,
only the simplicity of doing so--
and there, within, I can hug typhoons and not care;
I can watch time transpire, plan the whole mess
out like before.

Saddled to the nightmare,
my feet in hot leather on hot coals,
fevered forehead in the rain,
the voice of angels singing across the
mountaintops capped in silver lice.

Insomniac nights are all part of the bargain.

3 comments:

moonshinejunkyard said...

this is a pretty dark poem for a birthday song. slavery and nightmares. but also, of course, like all your writing, starkly and bleakly beautiful...i don't get the image in the first stanza and predictions of inevitable acting...sounds sad, but i'm not sure.

Anonymous said...

this is so bleak, Mattie, hopefully it was just the quick passage of time and the desire to embrace all and at once too much that brought out this pain in your poem, or maybe i've misunderstood, Anyway, you are my precious genius and hooray for the birth of a genius during the world series of 1979...p.s. do you mean to say "silver lice" in the last line?... my devotion forever...

mattbeatty said...

Actually, I did mean to say silver lice, as opposed to ice. I just liked the imagery of it, and how it was almost a pun.

This whole thing was just kind of a moment I had; I'll leave it at that.

Thanks for the nice comments--both of you!