----

Sometimes they take over
The rhythms in your head
Nuances of rhyme schemes
The lines your muse has fed
You want to use a smaller word
Pontificate instead
It gallops through your consciousness
A wild horse - unlead!

The hooves go on like thunder
Upon the steed you ride
Tearing up the page
Pen in hand - astride
You are without a bridle
Legs grip the mustang's side
He has his own way
He is a beast with pride!

No - he has no stable
No - his blood flows wild!
Fed grass of the planes
He's restless as a child
A stallion - yes! A bucking bronc!
Unbroken - never mild!
Get into his rhetoric
He's always getting riled!

Write like you're a MUSTANG!
RIDE ON!!! You have no reins!
Get into his rhythm
The rhyme scheme is unstrained
Your footing is unsure
In uncertain terrains
Playing echo chamber music
Those cacophonous refrains

Bust that bronc!!! He's waiting -
Your own head unrestrained!!!


SoulSurvivor
(C) 5/19/2015

The fuzzy hug that never loosens its grasp
Clutching as a barbed wire hugs and puppies cuddle and love,
whiskers and noses nuzzling, the straitjacket loves your mind,
wishes it could just squeeze the nightmares out and streaming as juices from an orange,
but its might only pressurizes, the more you fight the more you hurt,
bruising our precious straitjacket heart, he’s here to help us
take the tasks of fettering hands
just to hug and coil about us
Learn to love them, the society blanket,
the crazy snuggler, the bunny constrictor
Crazy’s not useful and our little straitjacket cures our woes
strangling us within linen cotton folds
simmer our fires
breaking our bronc
hushing our tantrum cry
It’s the mother we Learn to love
Kin that keeps us in heavenly grip
The Straitjacket’s here for all our insanists

Not into what if's but men ask
What would I do if you weren't tied to old dude?
wear shorter skirts to reveal my **** legs.
wear lower cut tops to show off my larger, firm and natural assets.
walk into clubs alone and get surrounded by ***** guys pdq
all looking to ***** or spend a ton of cash and time on me.
That **** happens to hot eye candy a lot. : )
give great head to men I like and maybe date them.
I'd do all in the bedroom to satisfy a body.
You up for being ridden like a bucking bronc.
Yee haw cowboy! : )
Content with my man until he kicks.
Could be soon.
If he kicks gonna miss old dude spoiling my naughty pink ***.

The Camp Cooky’s singin again outa tune,
  about turnin 60 today around noon

"What good is there in it?" I hear him say,
  and it got me to thinkin . . . seein it was his birthday

It seems bein 60’s got two spins to that tale,
  one frittered and wrinkled, the other covered in shale

The one who’s 60 if truth be told,
  is still younger than all those 61—to real old

In the campfire’s crackle of light I can see,
  how everyone younger, is likely dumber than me

So if my hands struggle with the knots and riggin fer sure,
  the knowin and the tellin to those younger’s worth more

Havin outlived many a cow horse, while lovin them all,
  the awnry and skitterish, the short and the tall

The summers ridin drag, and the worst winters mendin fence,
  with a slicker full a holes, and that ol dog with no sense

And while the cuttin and the brandin seems boring to some,
  it’s the importance of their nature and gettin things done

When the hats and the spurs and even the saddles are all gone,
  and the sun sinks over that last mountain, like in Dusty’s ol song

I’ll remember the good times, lettin go of the bad,
  and think back on the pards and the ladies I’ve had

Because just like for Cooky, it happened last year to me,
  and turnin 60 seemed ranker than any bronc could ever be

But like that new Visalia saddle the boss man said was now mine,
  I've found somethin that’s different, somethin gentler and kind

The speed and the strength ain’t been traded for free,
  and somethin woke up that I guess was sleepin in me

And as I yell to the wrangler “Cut me one gentle and nice”
  without loosin too much pride I ask, “Can you help Ol Jim
  cinch his riggin real tight”

Then once more in the dark I ride off in search of the herd,
  singin that one favorite cow song every real hand has heard

And as I inch up on the lead steer whisperin mellow and low,
  “Yippee ki yay, Ol Fella; you ready to go”

For maybe one last time we push North thru the dark,
  the sun still two hours off to the right of our mark

While in the distance a wolf howls, as that lead steer catches my
  eye, and in that instant I know I’m still needed—a long ways
  from g’bye

(Dewey Montana: Circa 1990) Read In Elko Nevada, 1993

The evidence reviewed, this  a half time later.
"a man can
make up his"
own mind, my, me mine
myme mine mymemine nine iterations,

expand the basic concepts of topological
space time, in the neighbourhood
south of all three bridges into Saigon, on the roof

Make it up, make it all up, and wait fifty years.
Whiteface.
And the mime in the street keeps the beat
silently reciting Kerouakoan streams.
'Tryna get to sunny Californy' -
Boom.

Canned Heat, sterno still, sip it,  get back
Beatles became something akin
to a window left open now
fifty years, since January 1969, Radioman
and Tom Green on the Panasonic
music from the other side… the joke
'Look Fred, that man by the road'
Some *** fiend got in print in 1968

Get back, Jack. And that

started the whole world crying,
from the commonwealth to common woe,

-- Interesting times upon us, oh yeh

A hook, in a song,
Forty Million Frenchmen Can't be Wrong
- ah, allusion, get back, prophecy
- right, fifty years ago today, soon
- Ringo says Forty Million Churchills, back then
or late, lately as the topo-logical-ournearity
gets back to optimum
later there, we were, on the roof
of that old fishnet factory
dangled there before, me,
the deal, if you want it, come and get it
better hurry cause it's goin fast,
ping
ricochet -
Highschool History, 1963,
Forty Million Frenchmen can't be wrong?

What does that mean? I asked
Miss Dinas, who was plump, and cheery,
and she lived with Miss Some-name
I forgot
to notice, due to, the clue
in the way Miss Dinas winked, that one time,
not
at me, when she said
Forty Million Frenchmen Can't be Wrong.
-- look away
Some squared away artist cries, stop the lies!
Gray-ace, go fish
Wordsworth,
happy soldier character- no, Fernando- a bull
ABBA , not winking - snorting
at me, when she said
feed your head,
autistic community, com-unionize AI
timeandspace
re-
alize the musical, a means of saying things,
silly, silent
hints of splendor in the grass,
and weeds, and black-eyed suzannes,
growing in the road,
Tobacco Road,
down at the end of town, where
skid row hits the river,
long and wide,

milk and Hohner on t'othaside
sharp hone mama
Sioux wee, Sioux e- baby, be my baba now,
Humbaba, guard
my forest
sein, mein, wine and rosy days being wise
in thine own eyes,

as we warned, eh/ wahrrmmmnned edu
mcate edumacation, the deal was…
I was to learn to
become a maker of papermoney clips
from plastic straws on a trus'line, about to rupture
and spill guts
on gumption swallowed whole.
-------------------
Koans and Cohen and all
-- If it had been my will
I'd a been so dead, so long ago, I'd be
as if I'd never been,
-- If it had been my will

True rest, needs a weary mind,
to weigh its worth,
hangdown yo' head, Tom Green, duely done
do tie yer Jimmie Lee Jackson
Bronc Rider Trophy Buckle to m'line
let it out
come think a mile with me, let's
see what come to mind.

--whistle break
-- heads abobbin, we rock on, Sisyphus
the first,
agreed we got the message in the medium
evolved by will worship alone,
rock on, roll on un
aided, no doubt by the spirit advisor
to old Abraham Lincoln's jot on the margin
"a man can
make up his"… hmmm, his own mind, hmmm

wouldjaremind me, what was I thinkin'
"a man can
make up his mind to be as happy as he is…"

Free to be. I think free to be alive, maybe,
Lincoln was athinkin'
as a we, the people agree we do have title right
to life, awe
ja,
and liberty, I suppose, we must define, to refine,
down to the gilt around the frame,
on the back side, wasted glitter, thin film of actual gold
well
I'll be, did you ever see the like, a
con-
jurer or a presti-digital simulacrum truckin' on and on
sayin' come on
sing old songs, ones we ever
learned again
today
what you never thought possible, just a minute
ago,
as we ponder the effect of a silly millimeter longer
rising in a ribbon
past lips of an apple green shade,

It’s an eight second partnership
The bronc, an angry participant
And me, I’m just trying to keep my legs in the stirrups
My hands on the reins
My wits about me
In one piece
Welcome to my world
It’s a family affair
Me and my sons, Troy and Dusty
Traveling day and night just to fight
For a living, one unforgiving
But exciting as the day is long
And to keep that ranch in Utah going
200 head of cattle and worries about enough rain
Are in our thoughts as we live the literal ups and downs of rodeo
We’re in the saddle for good
For life
Living our destiny
As we should
As we want to
As we have

By: Cedric McClester
 
Everything that Trump touches dies
And every day Sarah Huckabee lies
To keep her job if I had to surmise
Even though she should go and cut ties
What will she do after he’s impeached?
Be a stay at-home-mom who’s overreached
Because obviously decorum’s been breeched
Like a whale stuck on shore she’ll be beached
 
That brings us to Kellyanne Conway
Lying to her is merely child’s play
She tries her best to have the last say
While keeping the press safely at bay
Though her reputation will not be in tact
That’s not conjecture, it’s an actual fact
Not an alternative hatched to distract
But a reality that can be backed
 
Now if you want someone who is iller
We can begin with Steven Miller
Who could have been cast in MJ’s Thriller
He’s definitely not a lady killer
I guess we could call him a policy wonk
If you agree with me, let me hear you honk?
Were he a horse he’d be a bronc
And if he played cards he’s lose at Poker and Tonk
 
Everything that Trump touches dies
Cuz he is surrounded by the unwise
Who cling to him like family ties
They’re addicted to power no one denies
Let’s look at all of the president’s men
Like Manafort, Cohen and what about Flynn
And let’s look at all the doo doo they’re in
But I’m at my wit’s end as to where to begin






Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2018. All rights reserved.

It’s an eight second partnership
The bronc, an angry participant
And me, I’m just trying to keep my legs in the stirrups
My hands on the reins
My wits about me
In one piece
Welcome to my world
It’s a family affair
Me and my sons, Troy and Dusty
Traveling day and night just to fight
For a living, one unforgiving
But exciting as the day is long
And to keep that ranch in Utah going
200 head of cattle and worries about enough rain
Are in our thoughts as we live the literal ups and downs of rodeo
We’re in the saddle for good
For life
Living our destiny
As we should
As we want to
As we have

It had been a long idyllic two-day ride from Taos to Jackson Hole.  The bike had been running well, in spite of the altitude, and the 1600 C.C. Yamaha Venture Royale handled with ease whatever the mountains had in store.

This was the second extended tour for Kurt and his twelve-year-old son, Trystan, who everyone called T.C. (Trystan Colin).  They had started in Long Beach, California, and were making a long semi-circular loop through Arizona, New Mexico, and then back to Wyoming.  After hiking and riding through Grand Teton National Park, they would head North through Yellowstone to Missoula Montana and ultimately reach their final northern destination — Glacier National Park.

This morning though, they would be traveling into an unknown world on the most proven and time-tested forms of transportation, horses and mules.

Teton Scenic Outfitters was the oldest guided tour company in Teton National Park.  Today’s route would take four tourists on a twenty-five-mile ride deep into the park.  At its highest point, the trail would be over 2000 feet above the Buffalo River. There would be two professional cowboys leading the tour.  The lead rider, and boss, was a 6’ 3’’, 200 lb., ex-college football player and rodeo bulldogger named Russ.  At the back was a diminutive, bow-legged, journeyman cowboy from Miles City Montana named Pete.  In between there was Kurt and his son T.C., both riding horses, and two nuns from the San Cristobal Convent in Cody Wyoming, riding mules.

There were two additional mules, between Russ and TC, that were loaded down with a week’s supplies for the Teton Art Camp at the end of the trail.  The Art Camp was a popular summer destination for both experienced and budding artists and depended on the supplies that Russ’s company delivered every Saturday.  At 8:30 a.m., four mules and four horses started the arduous and steep ascent up the narrow trail that was carved out of the east side of the mountain.

Before leaving, Russ had said: “In some places, the trail that’s cut into the rock is less than six feet wide. Don’t let this upset you.  The horses and mules do this almost every day, and they are more surefooted than any person walking.  Whatever you do, DON’T try to get off along the narrow trail.  We will come upon four open meadows, as we climb higher, and you can get off there, if need be, to walk a spell.”

Russ reminded everyone that they had signed a form acknowledging the risks of a mountain trail ride and that they were not afraid of heights. “Whatever you do, make sure to give the horse or mule its head.  Don’t try to guide it or change its direction, it will be following closely the animal in front of it and will become upset and disoriented if you try to change its forward motion.”

Pete, who was riding in the rear, had heard this speech a hundred times before.  He knew Russ would repeat it several more times as they continued their climb.  He also knew something that he hadn’t shared with anyone yet.  After feeling poorly for several weeks, he had traveled to the Medical Center in Idaho Falls for tests.  Two days later he had the results — Cystic Fibrosis.

Pete was only 26, but his doctor had told him that with treatment he had a very good chance of living into his fifties. “What can’t I do, Doc?” Pete had asked.  “Anything for right now,” the specialist advised. Just don’t get too far away from a good Medical Center, just in case. I wonder what he would think if he saw me today,” Pete mused.

The two nuns seemed to be enjoying themselves, but the one in the back, Sister Francis, directly in front of Pete, kept pulling on her right stirrup.  “I’ll have to adjust that when we stop,” Pete said to himself.
At 10:30 a.m., they came to the first clearing and Russ called everyone to gather around him. The meadow was a naturally formed pocket that carved into the mountain for about 100 yards.  There was tall spring grass growing as far as you could see.

“Hey T.C., whatta you think those two things are sticking above the grass about fifty yards ahead?” “I don’t know, Russ, they look like sticks.” “Well ... those sticks happen to be antlers that belong to a resting moose.”  Before Russ could say another word, T.C. had spurred his horse and was headed in the direction of the moose.  As T.C.’s father started to head after him, Russ grabbed his reins and said — “watch this.”

T.C. was still thirty yards from the antlers when an enormous moose stood up out of the grass. Seeing that, T.C.’s horse slammed on the brakes and T.C. went sliding off the right side of his mount.  Time seemed to be frozen in place until ... BAMM!

When Russ saw the moose stand up, he withdrew the Colt Peacemaker (45) from his holster and fired a shot into the air.  The horses and mules never moved, they were rifle trained, but the moose turned and ran into the woods at the far end of the meadow.

“Those things can get ornery when you take them by surprise.  I didn’t think your kid had the guts to charge a moose in the open field.  It’s one of the damnedest things I’ve seen in a long time.  With ‘try’ like that, he’ll make a good hand.

Both cowboys dismounted and went over to where T.C. was still sitting in the grass.  “Here, take this,” Russ said, as he gave T.C. a Snickers Bar from his vest pocket.  “The way you got off that horse would make any bronc rider proud.  Sister Marcella was filming you with her camera.  It you’re nice to her, I’ll bet she’ll send you a copy of the tape.”

Hearing Russ’s words were like his birthday and Christmas all rolled into one.  His rear end was a little sore, but his spirits had never been so high.  “Hey T.C., if your head hasn’t swelled too much, try this on,” said Pete.  Pete handed T.C. a baseball cap from his saddlebags.  It was a watershed moment for both father and son as T.C. took a giant step toward manhood.

Back on the trail, Russ repeated again: “Don’t try to guide your animal, they know where they’re going.”  In all the confusion, Pete had never gotten around to adjusting Sister Francis’ stirrup.  It was still bothering her, and her squirming was starting to affect her mule.

“Don’t mess with that stirrup anymore, Sister.  If you need to, just let your right leg hang down straight until we get to the next clearing.” Pete hadn’t finished speaking when Sister Francis pushed down again on the stirrup until it came loose and was dangling free.  The momentum of her pushing down with her right leg had pulled her body across the saddle, and she was now off the mule and standing — screaming — on the right side of her mule.

Less Than A Foot From The Edge ...

“Stop screaming, Sister, and I’ll try to get to you.”  Pete knew there wasn’t enough room on the trail for him to make it to the panicked nun, and he also knew he didn’t have enough strength in his upper body to pull her back if she started to fall.

Russ had heard the commotion and stopped the lead horse. He was too far in front to be of much help.  Pete’s best cowboy skill was that of a header in the team roping event.  The hat he had given T.C. was from the last rodeo he had won in Calgary, Alberta.  Pete instinctively took the rope from his saddle horn and formed a loop.  Just as he started to swing the rope, Sister Francis’ mule panicked and moved to the right pushing the nun toward the cliff.  As she started to fall, Pete managed to get a loop around her head and under one shoulder.  He pulled ******* the rope as she fell over the side.  He quickly took three turns around the saddle horn.  Pete knew he could hold it for a while without his horse moving, but if he tried to dismount, there’s no telling what the horse would do, and all three of them might go over the side.

It was just then that Pete saw something crawling between the legs of Sister Marcella’s mule.  T.C. had slid off the back of his horse and crawled between the legs of his dad’s horse, the two pack mules, and Sister Marcella’s now stationary mule.  When he got underneath Sister Francis’ mule, he started to talk in a gentle voice as he worked his way back to the rear.  Once under Pete’s horse, he reached over the side and grabbed the rope. Luckily, Sister Francis was only three feet below the rocky ledge. With T.C.’s help, and a lot of adrenalin, she was able to get her elbows up over the edge and slowly inch her way back onto the trail.  Pete held firm to the loop to make sure there was no backsliding.

T.C. and Sister Francis sat there for a long time until T.C. said: “Do you trust me, Sister?”  She said that she did as T.C. said: “Ok, follow me.” Together, they crawled underneath Pete’s horse to the very back of the train.  “How far is it to the next meadow, Pete?” T.C. asked.  “It’s only about a half-mile, “Pete called out.  “Ok, Sister Francis and I will walk the rest of the way, and we’ll meet up with you at the meadow.  Pete waved ahead to Russ, who was sitting there in a mild state of shock, to get going again.

It was a hero’s welcome when T.C. and Sister Francis arrived at the meadow.  “How did you know you could crawl underneath those horses and mule’s legs without getting trampled?” Russ asked.
“Well, it’s like this,” T.C. said.  “My dad was raised with horses and said that a horse would never step on a man.  I just figured it was the same with mules.”  “And where did you get the guts to try?” asked Pete.  “It wasn’t guts, I was just trying to finish what you had started.  If you hadn’t gotten that rope around her, nothing that I did would have mattered at all.”

“That rope was thrown from the hand of God,” said Sister Marcella, “and today, we were all blessed to see one of his miracles in action.”
The rest of the ride was uneventful.  Pete readjusted Sister Francis’ stirrup as Russ started to sing an old cowboy song.  “What’s the T stand for in T.C?” asked Russ.  “Trystan, my first name is Trystan, T.C.  answered back. With that, every Ian Tyson song they knew was being sung at high volume with the name ‘Trystan’ interjected into every one.

T.C.’s father had never been so proud.


Kurt Philip Behm: June, 2024