The first settlers to the area called the Lumber River Drowning Creek. The river got its name for its dark, swift-moving waters. In 1809, the North Carolina state legislature changed the name of Drowning Creek to the Lumber River. The headwaters are still referred to as Drowning Creek.

Three p.m. on a Sunday.
Anxiously hungry, I stay dry, out of the pool’s cold water,
taking the light, dripping into my pages.
A city with a white face blank as a bust
peers over my shoulder.
Wildflowers on the roads. Planes circle from west,
come down steeply and out of sight.
A pinkness rises in my breast and arms:
wet as the drowned, my eyes sting with sweat.
Over the useless chimneys a bank of cloud piles up.
There is something terrible in the sky, but it keeps breaking.
Another is dead. Fentanyl. Sister of a friend, rarely seen.
A hand reaches everywhere to pass over eyes and mouths.
A glowing wound opens in heaven.
A mirror out of doors draws a gyre of oak seeds no one watches,
in the clear pool now sunless and black.

Bitter water freezes the muscles and I am far from shore.
I paddle in the shallows, near the wooden jail.
The water reflects a taut rope,
feet hanging in the breeze singing mercy
at the site of the last public hanging in the state.
A part-white fugitive with an extorted confession,
loved by the poor, dumb enough to get himself captured,
lonely on this side of authority: a world he has never lived in
foisting itself on the world he has -
only now, to steal his drunken life, then gone again.

1871 - Henderson Oxendine, one of the notorious gang of outlaws who for some time have infested Robeson County, N. C., committing ****** and robbery, and otherwise setting defiance to the laws, was hung at Lumberton, on Friday last in the presence of a large assemblage. His execution took place a very few days after his conviction, and his death occurred almost without a struggle.

Today, the town square collapses as if scorched
by the whiskey he drank that morning to still himself,
folds itself up like Amazing Grace is finished.
A plinth is laid
in the shadow of his feet, sticky with pine,
here where the water sickens with roots.
Where the canoe overturned. Where the broken oar floated and fell.
Where the snake lives, and teethes on bark,
waiting for another uncle.

Where the tobacco waves near drying barns rusted like horseshoes
and cotton studs the ground like the cropped hair of the buried.
Where schoolchildren take the afternoon
to trim the kudzu growing between the bodies of slaves.
Where appetite is met with flood and fat
and a clinic for the heart.
Where barges took chips of tar to port,
for money that no one ever saw.

Tar sticks the heel but isn’t courage.
Tar seals the hulls -
binds the planks -
builds the road.
Tar, fiery on the tongue, heavy as bad blood in the family -
dead to glue the dead together to secure the living.
Tar on the roofs, pouring heat.
Tar is a dark brown or black viscous liquid of hydrocarbons and free carbon,
obtained from a wide variety of organic materials
through destructive distillation.
Tar in the lungs will one day go as hard as a five-cent candy.

Liberty Food Mart
Cheapest Prices on Cigarettes
Parliament $22.50/carton
Marlboro $27.50/carton

The white-bibbed slaughterhouse Hmong hunch down the steps
of an old school bus with no air conditioner,
rush into the cool of the supermarket.
They pick clean the vegetables, flee with woven bags bulging.
What were they promised?
Air conditioning.
And what did they receive?
Chickenshit on the wind; a dead river they can't understand
with a name it gained from killing.

Truth:
A man was flung onto a fencepost and died in a front yard down the street.
A girl with a grudge in her eyes slipped a razorblade from her teeth and ended recess.
I once saw an Indian murdered for stealing a twelve-foot ladder.
The red line indicating heart disease grows higher and higher.
The red line indicating cardiovascular mortality grows higher and higher.
The red line indicating motor vehicle deaths grows higher and higher.
I burn with the desire to leave.

The stories make us full baskets of dark. No death troubles me.
Not the girl's blood, inert, tickled by opiates,
not the masked arson of the law;
not the smell of drywall as it rots,
or the door of the safe falling from its hinges,
or the chassis of cars, airborne over the rise by the planetarium,
three classmates plunging wide-eyed in the river’s icy arc –
absent from prom, still struggling to free themselves from their seatbelts -
the gunsmoke at the home invasion,
the tenement bisected by flood,
the cattle lowing, gelded
by agriculture students on a field trip.

The air contains skin and mud.
The galvanized barns, long empty, cough up
their dust of rotten feed, dry tobacco.
Men kneel in the tilled rows,
to pick up nails off the ground
still splashed with the blood of their makers.

You Never Sausage a Place
(You’re Always a ****** at Pedro’s!)
South of the Border – Fireworks, Motel & Rides
Exit 9: 10mi.

Drunkards in Dickies will tell you the roads are straight enough
that the drive home will not bend away from them.
Look in the woods to see by lamplight
two girls filling each other's mouths with smoke.
Hear a friendly command:
boys loosening a tire, stuck in the gut of a dog.
Turn on the radio between towns of two thousand
and hear the tiny voice of an AM preacher,
sharing the airwaves of country dark
with some chords plucked from a guitar.
Taste this water thick with tannin
and tell me that trees do not feel pain.
I would be a mausoleum for these thousands
if I only had the room.

I sealed myself against the flood.
Bodies knock against my eaves:
a clutch of cats drowned in a crawlspace,
an old woman bereft with a vase of pennies,
her dead son in her living room costumed as the black Jesus,
the ***** oil of a Chinese restaurant
dancing on top of black water.
A flow gauge spins its tin wheel
endlessly above the bloated dead,
and I will pretend not to be sick at dinner.

Misery now, a struggle ahead for Robeson County after flooding from Hurricane Matthew
LUMBERTON
After years of things leaving Robeson County – manufacturing plants, jobs, payrolls, people – something finally came in, and what was it but more misery?

I said a prayer to the city:
make me a figure in a figure,
solvent, owed and owing.
Take my jute sacks of wristbones,
my sheaves and sheaves of fealty,
the smell of the forest from my feet.
Weigh me only by my purse.
A slim woman with a college degree,
a rented room without the black wings
of palmetto roaches fleeing the damp:
I saw the calm white towers and subscribed.
No ingrate, I saved a space for the lost.
They filled it once, twice, and kept on,
eating greasy flesh straight from the bone,
craning their heads to ask a prayer for them instead.

Downtown later in the easy dark,
three college boys in foam cowboy hats shout in poor Spanish.
They press into the night and the night presses into them.
They will go home when they have to.
Under the bridge lit in violet,
a folding chair is draped in a ***** blanket.
A grubby pair of tennis shoes lay beneath, no feet inside.
Iced tea seeps from a chewed cup.
I pass a bar lit like Christmas.
A mute and pretty face full of indoor light
makes a promise I see through a window.
I pay obscene rents to find out if it is true,
in this nation tied together with gallows-rope,
thumbing its codex of virtues.

How we start is only part of what we eventually do.

Physically that's easy to see. Being human, adamkind,
we see weak starts often in life.
Colts or pups born a week too soon can be loved to lives as pampered pets,
Siring toys for the enjoyment of those who can afford to fuel them,
For generations, with never a single care,
Past that initial trauma and subsequent subjugation to the will of man.

I don't tell horse stories, dog stories or war stories, if I can keep from it.

But when you want to demonstrate the purest of payback,
revenge getting the bad guy in the end,
having a horse be the hero makes behaving like an animal
more noble to the mind of vengeful man.
It's not true, revenge being noble.
That's a very old lie.

Law is to prevent error by disallowing failure. Law.

Relative to the rest of God's creatures, we, adamkind, seem dependent, weak and vulnerable next to bears being weak
a way-less long time
Than we.
We come into this world weak as a baby anything and we stay that way longer
Than any living creature.

I am an American, by birth.
I was not born to a political party or a family with political roots,
"I ain't no Senator's son."
Still,
I was reared drinking mythic cherry wine
sprung from George's failure to lie
Regarding his woodman's knack with a hatchet.

Sitting on the fence rail Abe split,
town fathers where I lived
were said to have decided the most harmonious of towns
have only gainfully employed darker folks,
while white
trash was allowed to loll around because they was
some employer's kin by marriage.

It all seemed pretty normal, as a child.
The loller-arounders let kids listen when they told
Their friends, who could not read, what the newspapers said.

One block from my house there was a vet's and hobo's flop-house clad in corrugated tin, rusted-round the nail-holes all the way to the ground and the rust had spread, so at sunset,...
I only recall the single story shed having one door.
There were always old white men sittin' on the southside of the shed. At sunset, those old men's whispy white hair

appeared as white flowing mare's tale clouds under
a scab-red wall held up by old men with sunset shining faces...

It was a big shed, a low barn, a bunkhouse,
eight or ten 4-foot tin-sheets long on the north and south
Windowless walls.
The one door was on the south side.
Once I saw an old man selling red paper buddy poppies.
He was missing both legs about half-way up his thighs.
The poppy seller rode a square board that had what I think were
Roller-skates, the key-kind, with metal wheels about a 1/2 inch wide.
Nailed to it's bottom. He had handles made from a carpenter's saw
Without it's blade. He pushed himself with those handles.

That looked fun, to a four-year old.
It looks different now-a-days. Knowing
Those red poppies symbolized
The after math automatics of the war to end war.

Who knows the poppy-sellers son? He would be old.
Does he know how his father lost his legs, but lived?
Does he bear the curse of the curse that lost his father's legs?
Does he honor his father's cause or weep at the thought?

Enough is enough.
My family tree branched in America, but only one great grand-parent,
Three generations back from me, was rooted in this land.
My gran'ma's ma, a Choctaw squaw,
That rhymed fine,
But it's not true. My grandma did not know her parents. She was born an orphan,
And her father and mother were likely strangers.

1910 in southwest Arkansas or southeast Oklahoma or northeast Texas or northwest Louisiana
And the color of her skin is all that proved my American heritage.

My grandma was born poor as poor can be,
she never told me how she survived

To survive a 1925 or so car wreck
in eastern Arizona's white mountains.
I never asked what my grandmother knew,
nor how she came to know.

This is my point.
After you and I have gone into forever more,
Our great grand children may wonder
what we did or did not, since we
Are no longer around to give our account.

These days we can leave our story to our great grand children.
Our own children
And our grand children follow us on facebook back to before they were born.
Shall they judge us idlers wielding idle words for laughs,
or  think us knowers of all we found while seeking first the Kingdom of Heaven
In the place Jesus says it is. You know where Jesus said the Kingdom of our kind lies?

The double minded man is unstable in all his ways,
hence Eve and her broader bandwidth corpus colostrum
Come back later, there is a breath system upgrade evolving.

Such changes to the courage of the mind rolls out more slowly
to the root ideas, labouring to find sustenance,
it is a struggle being a radical idea,
we agree, but we have our part,
as do the flowers
and the spore.
Leaven the whole lump, like it or lump it.

The now we live in grew from far deeper roots than
the roots claimed by the
Self-identified nation through it's cartoons/representations of national desires to rally 'round the flag as if it were the fire,
those desires to herd beneath any shelter from the storm,
Your country, your incorporated allegiance
to the inventor and creator and counter of the money under
the protection of the sword and crown representative
of the flame that burns,
The namers of patriot, the rankeers of ideas
who, by their existence,
naturally, over rule you.
Such powers are granted by the individual, not the mob.
You get that?

The desires of the nation over rule the desires of the individuals who
Com-prize the nation.
Whose side are you on, dear reader?

Is the idea we believed believable?
Ex Nihilo, I don't think so because
I can't imagine how now could be
Accidental-ly.

When my hero wore spurs as he went from the jail office to
Miss Kitty's place, (Gunsmoke on A.M. radio)

What did Miss Kitty do?
I had no clue.
In my hero's world people never
Did the wrong thing
While Marshal Dillon was in Dodge.

So did you think Miss Kitty's place was anything other
than a culturally acceptable
reference to professional social ******* workers
under a strong, smart female CEO
with top-level links to the local cops?

All these are rhetorical questions, this being
Rhetorical if you are hearing me say this.
That means, don't nod or raise your hand or shout Amen, kin!

I see your answer my answer and
I know my answer, so you know my answer.

Step-back, 1961, USA Snapshot
Unitas, Benny Kid Perett, Mantlenmarris, the Guns of Navarone.

Why I recall those things, I know not.
Why I did not say I do not know, I do not know.

Though, pausing to think,
knowing contains the doing of it within it, you know.
What's to do?

Outlaws were more my heroes than cowboys, and marshals, and such
Especially the ones that had been forced out by law.

I grew up in a 1950's junkyard with no fence, one mile north of route 66
On the Al-Can highway to Las Vegas, 103 miles away.
My Grandpa was a blacksmith's son,
who rode a horse he broke and his pa had shod
From Texas to Arizona in 1917, at the age of 18.

by the time I knew him,
He was fifty, settled down, nearly, from the war.
Momma had to work, so, daytime, Granddaddy raised me.

Horses weren't, wrecked cars were,
the toys of my childhood.

Grandpa built a junkyard from cars left steam blown
on the old stage road, from before
the railroad.
The Abo Highway hain't been Route 66 for some time yet…
Hoping…


Hoping sometime to polish this bit of this book, I left myself re-minders
Hoping memory of mental realms might rewind or unwind sequentially
When trigger
Neighed.
That worked, Roy Autry and Gene Rogers were names Sue Snow's
Mormon Bishop granddaddy called me,
back when I first recall My Grandpa Caleb,
a baptist by confession,
who was,
as I recall a *****-drinkin' jolly drunk.
While Grandma made beds in some motel,
granddaddy built boats and horse trailers
and hot rod 34 Chevies,
and he fixed this one red Indian, I could read the word on the gas tank, I knew the word Indian
and this motor cycle was proud to wear the name. I was 4.

A stout-strong man, no fat near any working muscle system,
he could and would
repair any broken thing,
for anybody. People called him Pop.
Pop and Mr. Levi-next-door at the Loma Vista Motel, shared a listing in the Green Book,
so broke down ******* knew where help could be found
after dark in that town.
There was a warnin'ag'in
let'n sunset there
on darker than grandma's skin.

My Gran'daddy's shop had two gas pumps
that were reset to begin pumping with the turn of a crank.
As soon as I could turn that crank,
I could pump gas.
I could fill up that red Indian
Motorcycle.
But "m'spokes was too short
to kick the starter."
I told my eleven year old uncle
and he told
how he would always remember learning
that saddles have no linkage
to horse brakes.
"Not knowing what you cain't do
kin *** ye kilt."

He grew up in the junk yard, too.
My first outlaw hero.

Likely, I am alive today, because
On the day I discovered I could pump gas as good as any man,
I also discovered that real motorcycles were not built for little boys.

There’s nothing wrong with the neighbors

That a few rounds

Won’t settle down

They are Mexicans after all

And understand the brutal language

Of the gun

They only laugh and get louder

Whenever the cops

Come around

But they know that the mix

Of gunsmoke and anger

Means

Turn the **** music down

Enough Fiesta

Night after night

Enough Tequila

Day after day

Don’t **** your neighbor off

Or the next one

Might come your way… Ole’!

© 2011 (by Jim Sularz)
(The true tale of Frank Eaton – “Pistol Pete”)

At the headwaters of the Red Woods branch,
near a gentle ***** on a dusty trail.
On an iron gate, at the Twin Mounds cemetery,
a bouquet of dry sunflowers flail.

In a grave, still stirs, is a father’s heart,
that beats now to avenge his death.
Six times, murdered by cold blooded killers,
six men branded for a son’s revenge ….

Rye whiskey and cards, they rode fast and hard,
the four Campseys and the Ferbers.
With malicious intent, they were all Hell bent
to commit a loving father’s ******.

When the gunsmoke had cleared, all their faces were seared,
in the bleeding soul of a grieving son.
Ain’t nothin’ worse, than a father’s curse,
to fill a boy with brimstone and Hell fire!

Young Eaton yearned and soon would learn,
the fine art of slinging lead.
Why, he could shoot the wings off a buzzin’ horsefly,
from twenty paces, lickety split!

Slightly crossed eyed, Frank had a hog-killin’ time,
at a Fort Gibson shootin’ match.
Upside down, straight-on and leanin’ backwards,
he out-shot every expert in pistol class.

By day’s end when the scores were tallied,
Frank meant to prove at that shootin’ meet.
That he would claim the name of the truest gun,
and they dubbed him - “Pistol Pete.”

In fact, Pistol Pete was half boy, half bloodhound,
a wild-cat with two 45’s strapped on.
In District Cooweescoowee - bar none,
he was the fastest shot around!

Pistol Pete knew his dreaded duty had now arrived,
to hunt down those who killed his Pa.
He vowed those varmints would never see,
a necktie party, a court of law.

Where a man is known by his buckskin totem,
in hallowed Cherokee land.
There, frontier justice and Native pride,
help deal a swift and heavy hand.

Pete was quick on the trail of a killer,
just south of Webber’s Falls.
Shannon Champsey was a cattle rustler,
a horse thief, and a scurvy dog!

Pete ponied up and held his shot,
to let Shannon first make a move.
The next time he’d blinked, would be Shannon’s last,
to Hell he’d make his home.

With snarlin’ teeth and spittin’ venom,
Pete struck fast like a rattlesnake.
Two bullets to the chest in rapid fire,
was Shannon’s last breath he’d partake.

Pete galloped away, hot on the next trail,
left Shannon there for a vulture's meal.
Notched his guns, below a moon chasing sun,
and one wound to his soul congealed.

There’s a saying out West, know by gunslingers best,
that’ll deep six you in a knotty pine casket.
One you should never forget, lest you end up stone dead,
“There’s always a man – just a shade faster.”

Doc Ferber was next to feel Pete’s hot lead,
“Fill your hand, you *******!”
With little remorse, Pete shot him clear off his horse,
left him gunned down in a shallow ditch.

After getting reports, Pete headed North,
to where John Ferber hunkered down.
A Missouri corner, in McDonald County,
filled with Bible thumpers in a sinner’s town.

Pete rode five hundred miles to shoot that snake,
with two notches, he welcomed a third.
He carried his cursed ball and chains,
to **** a man, he swore with words.

But John Ferber was plastered, and he didn’t quite master,
deuces wild, soiled doves and hard drinkin’.
Someone else would beat Pete, the day before they’d meet,
sending John slingin’ hash in Hell’s kitchen.

There’s a night rider without a father,
under a curse to settle a score.
In all, six murderous desperados,
Three men dead - now, three men more ….

Pistol Pete was now pushin’ seventeen,
just a young pup, but no tenderfoot.
With two men in the lead, he was quick on his steed,
to **** two brothers who killed his kin.

Pete rode up to their fence, with a friendly countenance,
spoke with Jonce Campsey, but asked for Jim.
“There’s a message from Doc, that you both need to hear,”
Pete readied his hands – both guns were cocked!

Pete continued in discourse, and got off his horse.
all the while in an act of pretense.
Jim came to the door and Pete read them the score,
and shot them both dead in self-defense.

With the help of the law, they verified Pete’s call,
then gathered any loot they found.
Laid Jim and Jonce out, in their rustic log house,
and burnt them both and the house to the ground.

Might have seemed kind of callous, but weren’t done in malice,
that those boys were burnt instead of swingin’.
They just sent them to Hell, sizzlin’ medium well,
besides, it “saved them a lot of diggin’.”

There was one man to go, he’d be the last to know,
that a hex is an awful thing.
That a young boy would grow, with a curse in tow,
to **** a man, was still a sin.

Pete garnered his will, with the best of his skills,
to take on the last of the Campsey brothers.
It would be three to one, Wiley and two paid guns,
Pete knew his odds were slim and he shuddered.

At nearly twenty-one, Pete knew he may have out-run,
his luck as the fastest gun.
This would be the ultimate test of his shootin’ finesse,
only a fool would stay to be outgunned.

But Pistol Pete weren’t no liver lilly,
and he loaded up his 45’s.
He rode into town with steely nerves,
maybe no one, would come out alive!

Pete knocked through that swingin’ bar-room door,
Wiley stood there with a possum eating grin.
He said, “Hey there kid, who the Hell are you?”
and Pete shouted, “Frank Eaton! You killed my kin!”

All four men drew quick, with guns a’ blazing,
Wiley got plugged first from two 45’s.
The bar-room crowd dispersed in a wild stampede,
everywhere, ricochetin’ slugs whizzed by!

When the shootin’ had stopped, there was just one man standin’
all four men got plugged, includin’ Pete.
But only a shot-up boy rode out of town that day,
and a Father’s curse, that played out complete –
was a bitter mistress to bury….

At the headwaters of the Red Woods Branch,
near a gentle ***** on a dusty trail.
On an iron gate, at the Twin Mounds cemetery,
a bouquet of morning glories flail.

In a grave, still deep, is a father’s heart,
that lays quiet in a peaceful sleep.
And six men dead, who now burn instead,
compliments of Pistol Pete!

By: Cedric McClester

On city streets
It ain’t no joke
You can choke
On all the gunsmoke
From young men
Who go for broke
But how many of us
Can say that we’re woke?

The innocent die
For no good reason why
With families and loved ones
Left to cry
While perpetrators
Seek their alibis
Because what they did
Makes them despised

Their calling card is
The reckless disregard
They have for others
Their sisters and brothers
And what of the mothers
Who if given their druthers
Would prefer that reason
Ruled over all others

But it’s the innate
Examples of self-hate
That gives this debate
Such added weight
The consequences of which
We can easily state
Are readily apparent
For us to calculate







Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2022.  All rights reserved.

He was baptized in whiskey
and gunsmoke aroma
Took up with a Cherokee woman
Quite friskey
Down in the Territory of Oklahoma
Tired of one too many killings
He took his side iron off
Wrapped it in its holster folded
Inside a gun oiled rag
Replaced it with his Mother's Bible
From within his saddle bag
Listened to that smart Indian woman
Who said he'd hung around the Territory
Too long
And if we don't skeedaddle
You'll be hangin' longer than you want
Smartest woman he'd ever known
She'd heard there's no law or religion
West of the Pecos and beyond
So they headed out to Texas
To preach the gospel to outlaws
****** and poor Mexican Catholics
Wrote off the Oklahoma Territory Baptists
Whose thick hides hide drunken sinners
Ridin' hard and fast her buckskin skirt
Above her thighs
Ridin' with a winner
Dark hair flowing behind
Ridin' hard to in his sight keep her
Such beauty that could stir the
***** and mind
Of even an old saddle preacher

r

Here we are again, in the deathmask of the city spinning.
The circumcised sea with its crocodiles and scars.
Never is the onrush of blood so violent the falsehoods
of the sky that drip neon on our heads
from desiccated clouds so true

This is the wild:

To the clusterfucked and cloistered swimming
in their bowls of soup and the scuttled
shells synchronous in their bass pulse beeping
to the blackhats who don’t believe
their messiah will ever come because they hear
the trump of doom every second of every day
yet they still stomp in their flatbeds for joy

and the prismatic dead who drag themselves from
their gurneys to march through the alleys
like tuskless elephants shoving their fingers
into the sun’s fumarole determined
to disintegrate into a mist of Krylon and copper

where we carry our concrete world slung
over our shoulders and the ravenous
moon in its ellipse above beached night heaving,
eyes curling in their sockets like gunsmoke smoldering
hearts humming like taut snares beheaded fish
in front of us, beheaded bodies behind us
I drag mine along by the hair.

To the children and the panhandlers who greet
the lion like hello kitty
and the skittish magnetic few in their
lightning-spaded furrows
on the ecliptic chained but leaping ever farther
and higher like the wrecking ball’s pendulum

and all the naked lost milling among the mummified
tenements, waving Geiger counters before them
as they wander  the sweaty street holding their heads
high as they grind flesh against flesh
pulverizing themselves into rubble

measuring the toll of time by destruction  
drinking in mercury and hard water and
shrapnel and gamma and fire and gold

to them I say:

turn your hourglass on its side turn
your hourglasses on their sides
then acknowledge me so I can die in peace.

Undiscovered
Unconquered
and untampered with
Pure as the snow on the highest caps
No worries
no drama
no situation
no problems that she can call her own
Ducking and dodging the vultures
that can smell her innocence
Wanting to be the first to claim
She moves on knowing her worth
and will not settle for less
They yell after her with no respect
but she does not mind she don't have the time
or patience for such vulgarity
Now 18 with her virtue safe and sound
She has things to do
life to conquer

Out on her own a sheltered child
she face the big world with dreams and ambition
Not knowing about the wolves in sheep clothing
that she will meet along the way
She meet a man who befriended her
made her feel safe in this crazy world
Took her in, in a city where she knew no one
Took care of her bought her everything
she ever needed or wanted
Her whole life was this man
her savior in her eyes, the love of her life
She made a decision to giver her one true gift to him
and that was her virginity
The day of the gift giving she set everything up
so it would be special
Told him that she had a surprise for him
but what she didn't know he had a surprise waiting for her

It started off as planned but then his whole demeanor altered
to a man she didn't know
He got rough with her
Hitting and chocking her
Before she knew it 3 men appeared
before her like they were on stand by
A night she would always remember
they ravashed and spoiled her
used her like a wet rag
A night of pain and humiliation
With film to capture this horrible moment
The man she loved and believed in
turned out to  be a snake/a monster

He started controlling her every move
said she had to pay him back
for everything he ever did for her
He tricked her out to hundreds of men
Threatened to **** her if she ever left
With no hope for a better life
She turned to drugs to dull the pain and anguish
Now an abused prositute crack *****
Abused in every form she thinks the only way out
is in the form of death

After 4 years of heartache and misery she finally had enough
She made the decision to give the last special gift, her life
The day of the gift giving she set everything up so it would be special
She wrote her last words and went to sleep
He found her the next morning in the tub surrounded by burnt down candles
Od'd on her drug of choice
with both wrist slit
She wanted to be sure
He read her final goodbyes
With her life in his hands the monster spiraled out of controlled
it haunted him til he couldnt take it no more
and ended his torment in a cloud of gunsmoke

QNA

A Tuesday morning
Gunsmoke, a hot cup of Joe.
The TV turned on animal planet
Switch back to gunsmoke.
Cartoons come on once a while
For the grandkids that play their jokes
Eggs, waffles, pancakes.
Butter syrup with the toast.
A good tasting yolk from the eggs
And a good yolked family

At an early age I was trained to ****
To enjoy the moment enjoy the thrill
When the 7.62 found the mark
And ripped apart another's life
Getting high on cordite smoke
Turning the moment into another joke
Dipping fingers in the blood
That from my victim on the ground had spread
To glorify in his death
Then deprive another of his breath
With another one through his lungs
Wow killing can be so much fun
Do I care that their families weep
No they were just a bunch of creeps
And I'll **** some more if I get the chance
Then walk away without a backwards glance

BUT

No it never was like that
Because you become enmired in the crap
You **** yourself and your stomach heaves
From the stench of blood and ****
Carried on the breeze
No thrills no fun no stupid jokes
Just ****** pants and sweat and trembling limbs
No glory in the site of blood
Turning sandy ground into puddled mud
The stink of gunsmoke in your throat
It could have been me
Not the other bloke

When I was thirteen
and still seeing daylight
between my ****** feet
I went to spend the night
with my best friend;
we watched Gunsmoke
on the TV and raided
the refrigerator;
I remember his sister
coming home later
and leaving a crack
in her door and taking
off her clothes before
turning the radio
of my childhood on
leaving it playing
all the hot night long
and I sill hum every one
of those sweet songs.

She sits in a cracked vinyl chair
in a room full of octogenarians,
as gunsmoke plays quietly
in the background-
James Arness is saying something
about the only woman
he's ever loved.

She digs her fingernails
into her palms and stares
at the floor with its repeating
faded patterns.
She doesn't belong here,
matching pain and numbness
to lifespans triple her own.

The nurse calls her name
and she stands so slowly,
bones creaking, wavering slightly
as she waits for the fog to clear.
She pads softly down the dim hall
and they leave her in a quiet room,
quite alone.

The doctor calls her a pretty young thing,
asks her what she is doing here.
He gives no answers,
only more medications
and a sticky sweet smile
meant to placate.

She walks away into the sunlight
and a song plays on repeat in her head:
I Know it's Over.

Where is the soldier
who floundered in his backyard?

Amidst the windswept sawgrass,
(Which, by the way,
Cut so hard against his skin)
He felt the sensitivity of his own lost soul,
So on the surface,
that it was hurt by its own feeling.

He, who dipped and swayed,
And felt angry, perverted, and *****,
lonely, now,
He lets his mind wander,
When he's never done that before.

Now he is away,
Careening through space, time,
and *****.

Peicing together destruction,
and how much humanity and evil,
Well up from us
as a reaction to death,
How so frail we are,
How ***** releases a man.

Where the horizon finally finds itself, he has been lifted,
Too heaven,
Among God and Gods and monkeys
and clouds.

Too where gunsmoke rises eternally,
With the heartbeat of man,
A slow, hollow drumming,
emptiest,
The emptiest.

In the brotherhood of the melting sunset,
Where molten horizon simmers overtop the edges of the pines,
And the whole world is finally pure chaos,
sadness and beauty.

He reaches the bottom of his dreams,
and still wandering,
Goes back into the house,
To ******* so much and hard that it hurts,
To sleep.

this is the story of cedric hyde-fleet
the most un-cowboy cowboy you ever would meet
cedric was english, not british you see
but, being a cowboy was what  he wanted to be

he was from england
as i said before
never ridden a horse
and well, what's more
his image of cowboys
was of those on tv
but, being a cowboy
was what he wanted to be

he was all set to travel
and leave his home land
out to the west
but, he was allergic to sand
the dust would wreak havoc
with his pale, flaky skin
ten miles from home
was the furthest he'd been

he had a six shooter
which he'd nicknamed Old Burt
but, he didn't have bullets
they made his ears hurt
the smell of the powder
and the noise of the gun
made cedric wonder
if this would truly be fun

he needed a cream
for the chafing down there
and a specialized hat
to protect his thin hair
a brush wouldn't do
he would need a nice comb
he reacted to flannel
so he'd get shirts from rome

he'd fly out from london
head out west to a ranch
find a town just like gunsmoke
and a bar....the long branch
but, his stomach was tender
hard liquor was out
and the salt in the food
would just trouble his gout

but, cedric hyde-fleet
was determined to go
to the united states
to join a wild west show
he'd start out learning riding
how to shoot, and all that
he'd learn about cattle
he had his own hat

he was the most un-cowboy cowboy
they would have in the west
but, with his dedication
he would soon be the best
he would get all equipped
from dolce and gabbanna
his shirts and socks matched
his silk plaid bandanna

now, cedric hyde-fleet
never ever left home
never got on the horse
or got shirts made in rome
the things that he wanted
were the things that he'd seen
and he forgot about cowboys
when he first saw ....The Queen

The curtain falls, flickering lights
light the ground and reveal the scene
The life is a stage, with vertiginious heights
and death is our final performance

****** requires perfection
It requires the pure lack of feeling
And what is life, what is satisfaction
without the euphoria of killing

Everyone wears a mask
I just chose to create my own
And I will not stop and finish my task
until your body will drop down

Im on the chase,
wont reveal my face
I will finally end your disgrace

The sound of my gun
as proud as an eagles scream
like a whisper of death
and a promise of salvation
leaves fear and terror
wherever it speaks

The gunsmoke evaporates
and this blossom of blood
That the shot created on the ground
this never ending beautiful flood
And the wonderful aspect
of the silenced sound

Killing is art
And madness is just inspiration

Many people are upset because we've lost a talented actor named Ned.
He passed away on June the 13th and many are sad because he's dead.
He starred in "Superman", "Superman II" and "The Toy".
He gave performances that people were bound to enjoy.
He starred in TV shows such as "Highway To Heaven" and "Roseanne".
Millions of people appreciated Ned because he was a very talented man.
He also starred in "Gunsmoke", "******, She Wrote" and "Kojak".
It's very sad to know that he's dead and won't be coming back.
I enjoyed seeing him star in the first two Superman movies as Otis.
Ned died of natural causes at the age of 83 and he will be missed.

You know
There are those here
Who have smelt the gunsmoke
And had the blood of death on our hands
But for the most part it was in an honest war
And in war men must and do die
And we plied the trade of war
And what could result
But these days its a different war
An insidious snake
Squirming its way into the bowels of societies
Kids indoctrinated via the internet
A car bomb by a mosque
Simply became I have a different belief
Yes, cut his head off with a long blunt knife
Man that really makes you hard
Oh, yeah well of course his hands were tied
After all it wouldn't be good video
If he was fighting back.

Cool breeze of death on the back of my throat
Is there light at end of the tunnel
Or just no hope
Walking on the tightrope
Sliding down a slight *****
Is it only me who just can't cope
When all I want is to look down my kaleidoscope
Puff the magic dragon with the gunsmoke
Am I being real or is this just a joke

By: Cedric McClester

Is it a question
Or a foregone conclusion
Were they radicalized  
Or is that an illusion
I’d like to weigh in
To address the confusion
It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes
To become disillusioned

Why ask the question
If you already know
By the caliber of weapon
How far it will go
It’s understandable
Is you’re a news show
But not law enforcement
Who it’s so below

We’ve seen the movie
It’s the same old script
Shooters start blazing
And we’re in fear’s grip
Not only that
They’re also well equipped
Then the police show up
Once they’ve been hipped

Then there’s a gun fight
Bullets everywhere
Gunsmoke starts rising
And pollutes the air
The perpertrators have an attitude
Of devil may care
And nine times out of ten
They’re going down right there
















Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2015.  All rights reserved.

that rerun I watched last night
the *** version of Gunsmoke
where the foreplay is not
nine seasons long
I limped just like Chester,
yearning for Miss Kitty,
knowing her
and Marshall Dillon were
upstairs, having a "tea" ,
and well, in last night's version,
Miss Kitty was unforgettable.

Locations:
Left Arm/Shoulder: 26
Torso: 13
Right Arm/Shoulder: 7
Right Leg: 4
Head: 5
Left Leg: 2
Unspecified: 2
Total 54

Matt Dillon was shot 54 times. Matt Dillon was shot and shot a lot.

once we were
young
dangling our legs
off the stone
wall dividing your
backyard in half.

we got a little
older
and you ran your
father's truck
backwards off
that same wall.

the truck was fine
(until the wheel
fell off awhile later)
but i daresay you
killed a few flowers
in the process.

during swimming lessons
i never jumped in the pool
but a year or two later
i fell off the deep end.

you never understood
and i doubt you
ever will but you've
sure as hell stayed.

we both realized
what was wrong with
everything
and that was
when we left
for war.

sharing music
and things that smell
wonderful
linked-arm goose-stepping
down hills
lazy sunday afternoons
with the rat-tat-tat
echoing through the house.

last summer you were
cursing for the fun of it
in the church parking lot
when the pastor showed up

you'll never agree
with my stupid *** reasons
and i won't say the
s-word if you don't want me to.

and in two or three years
we'll be full grown adults
leaning up against some
wall somewhere
(probably not the one
in your backyard)
and i will fish a pack of
cigarettes from the bottom of
my purse and you will proceed
to *** one off me
then offer me the use of your
vintage lighter

then i expect we'll stand there
smoking in silence
and we'll both be properly
****** up

you're d-day in
a floral dress
and i'm a radio signal
lost on the airwaves

we're both scraps
of destruction
whispers of a truce
lost in taffeta and lace
because we forgot
to bring the blood
and choked on
gunsmoke

we go together like
fire and gasoline
toxic
volatile
and having a whole
lot of fun in the meantime.

LORD said, These have no master:
let them return every man to his house in peace.

From <https://biblehub.com/kjvs/1_kings/22.htm>

There came a time,
when none found peace,
on any channel there is war, and old tropes
from when aldous
huxley was running suggestions past ivy lee and freud's
nephew, new-thinking, yes, resonant, isn't it
eddy bernays, yes, the sizzle sell. And,
get to the yeses, all the promises
are yeses

lovely, lovely, lovely,
how easily we seem to live on TV, if it gets too gritty,
-oh fool me, once, hahaha
it has, it has gotten too, many grinding high friction,
on backsides warmed with old time religion,
-woodshed discussions were never discussed
nor was curiosity praised,
for asking if the grown ups knew what Miss Kitty's
girls did, down at the Long Branch, in Dodge City,
when it was wet,
and streets were muddy,
and had wooden side walks…. on the radio
Gunsmoke
Spurs into the saloon,
why sure, some fool's would.
But once.
You know, wanting to make the sound
of Marshall Dillon, coming through

old cobwebbed swing doors, as accurate as any
on black & white TV, the sound
of his spurs
on the boards,
made my grandma laugh.

We came exploring under the oath
of eternal hostility

and if need be, opposing force, prepositioned
in every way, upto 150,

and upto as well, if upto is not a valid preposition,
it is a position, I can conserve.
I take it all the time,
breathing upto and no more, no matter,
I can't explode, inhalation ceases
and I can't explode in rage,
by ceasing to exhale or ****.
-so
As to the power of oath it is seeming universal,
in the era of 5G unlimited plans, and shared
subscriptions,
publishers clearing house, trained sales force,
the biggest ever, at its height,
I was in that class, bright futures,
1962 Eighth graders in rural America sold more
magazine subscriptions than you may imagine,
as preparation for a future,
when sales is the only gig in town, and
nobody
is making any thing worth the pitch to patch the leaks,
it’s the same old story,
slowing down, settling for less, and saying that's enough,

but fully expecting too much on the backswing,
as we follow through, the amatuer guile, eh, act innocent

be one of miss kitty's girls, like on tv, but at Disneyland,
did they play the role, or
never know the whole, link to now from when,

the west was wild, big white men with guns,
came to tame it,
open many long branches… before Prohibition

Fifty more years, every body forget but AI, remembers,
Black Elk danced.

Backtalk to my professorial betters, ah
behave myself,
don't act like
ol' Johnny Apache, mockin' Annie Oakley wannabe
in Purple Santa Fe fringed leather jacket,
accented by rare Wuhan Pangolin
boots, belt, and saddle bag purse,
and a Caspel Twid straw hat, like Cher wore in People.

heh, hey Annie,
getcher gun, shoot me, I ain't good, I ain't dead,
or some such he said,
and he passed me his jug of Mogen David,
I took a pull,
just as no ****, a sheriffs deputy who had not
been shot, when he shoulda been,
in that Jamaica guy's song,
- Johnny's brother Jonah,  joined us in jail
- he was pretty bad shape, that night
- pukin' blood, and retchin'
the deputy at night was also oughta be dead, kinda man,
Johnny let me know later, that night in jail in 1970,
Cottonwood Arizona, I know,
I have told this story, too many times to make sense,

I also know Fred Douglas wrote his whole story
and published it, five times, as it rolled out….
over the years…
-thing reconnect, you gotta know the knots

so if I have the time and inclination,
and I happen to find a common sense, a mean measure,
- so much and no more,
- full of all thought about that and I agree

where all the rain that ever fell on me, at that time
once fell on someone you love, too, at the same time,
same rain,
some time, one time, I thought of that and thought of you,
because you read this line. And you thought so, too,
you said to yourself, life makes no sense,

if you feel you need to row your boat, or tote your weight,
this is an hour at the end of a happy life,

where cares were cast to mull over, wondering,
how did we get from then to now,
without being
normalized?

When I was a boy on the farm in
Missouri slaying dragons and
making swords out of sticks,
my Dad got me a coonhound pup.
He named him Festus.
Dad was a real Gunsmoke fan.
Festus grew, as I did, and we
traveled every inch of
that 120 acres.
There were two streams that
ran through our land,
and a pond south of the house.
We had 60 head of cattle and
several calves.  Festus would
help me chase them.
When I went to bed for
the night, I heard crickets and cicadas,
and always Festus, way off in
the distance howling and barking.
He didn't mind touring the
farm with me, but he
did his best work on his own,
late at night.
Now that I'm an adult, and
Festus is long gone,
I wonder if anybody can
hear me howl in the
darkness.

vague background terror claims camp way back where eyes
deprived of light cast sails and line through see
Your body is water. You gunsmoke cannonade
affections rip through my cannibal babbling brainscape
deaf and dumb to love’s language intending attendant
Old World Spanish.
bilateral line
Yours a river run down over nose and Cupid’s Bow to a
neck of shared fixation
clicking nails and
picked face turned rough planks are paddles by
which I leave and lose my way.
let me by losing it gain You near again
and join oceans all the same.