"rawhide" poems
buffalo head cloud
rawhide drums
saline rollers at tantalus cross
ominous light
forms a short mile away
head lice
and peckers
tap the metal track
shovel train pings
the night quiet
moonlight
shines in
geometric form
arches and skiddles
and skirting reflections
(a vast connection of
grand design)
7 horns
at the passing
(oh that cold metal joy!)
stirring the blades
and ground cover
you better not turn old friend
just nod,
and cut what you need
it’s a bitter run
on the winter line
(with the finest
of wheels
and runners)
hold tight
on the pulley
the canyon wires
are clipping
there’s a gateway
to the copper town
*with a key held
by coveted few*
you can spot the
riders in their
box cars
watching closely
at the chunnel’s
dark turn
we’d walk
the lines often
(and put an ear to the ground)
the mine town still
and barren
hidden treasures
and pocket *******
settled deep
in a tranquil, stolid place
Feb 3, 2017
Feb 3, 2017 at 12:03 AM UTC
The assassins hit in 63
And Camelot was gone,
Inspiration vanished
And the darkness sang it’s song.
*Vietnam escalated
Brezhnev’s Russia loomed,
Africa was eviscerated
And Red China entombed.
*Floating on a long white cloud
The Kiwis were replete
With abundant British markets
For their butter, wool and meat.
*The Europeans went ****
And Britain lost it’s way
When the Beatles and the Rolling Stones
Monopolized their day.
*Man landed on the moon
And raised the Yankee flag
And they shot Mahatma Ghandi
For making good things out of bad.
*The Berlin Wall dividing,
The Cold War tense and spare,
ICBM’s threaten silently
In their silos of despair.
*Bob Menzies ruled Australia
As an amassing of his loot
And his White Australia Policy
Condemned him as a brute.
*Found naked on her tousled bed,
Blonde hair across her face,
Marylin Monroe is dead
The world’s a darker place.
*In the Age of Aquarius
Our children lost their youth,
LSD and smoking ***
And Afro’s were the proof.
*Lots of leg in miniskirts,
High bouffant’s in the hair,
Screaming teeny boppers
Rock with Elvis on “the Air”.
*Giant, Rawhide, Ponderosa,
Martin Luther King,
Kaftans and a cheese fondue,
Abortion is a sin!
It’s a sixties kaleidoscope,
A panoramic skim
Of an era of wonderment
Which you and I lived in.
Marshalg
@the Gate
Mangere Bridge
20th January 2009
Oct 23, 2009
Oct 23, 2009 at 2:25 PM UTC
maple-cured, smoked, rawhide hands,
tarantula hands bulldozing rice onto
tines like an icebreaker ramming through
glacial bergs, Holly
Golightly on the tv, on
mute, and oh those hips,
that figure, in that black dress,
banana hands cracking Alaskan king
crablegs and ******* the juice and eating
the meat, legs spindly and hairy
and soaked in butter, dripping,
liver cooking, roasting, sloshed on gin,
cribbage board patinaed
in dust, he eats his liver, downs
another gin, cracks another leg, crab
hair caught in his teeth, Holly talking about
getting the mean reds but he can’t
hear it, his luck run out,
his luck a prize from a box of ******* Jack,
and the snarling throb in his head,
cinderblock face, cinderblock house,
3-day-stubble, has he had enough (to drink)?
not by the stubble of his
chinny-chin-chin,
liver is gone, crab is gone,
so he eats the eyes,
dowsing his ******* Jacks
in gin, yesterday wine-in-a-box
and Cheez-Whiz, sprayed right into his
unbrushed maw, a one-person wine-
and-cheese fête classy as it gets,
he’s Mister High Society,
Cheez-Whiz crust in his stubble,
and a cinderblock CRASHES to the floor and it’s
lights out, and Holly, still no one
to hear her, saying
she’ll never let anyone put her in a cage.
Feb 27, 2015
Feb 27, 2015 at 4:25 PM UTC
Not a day in your life, war have your eyes witnessed
You lay safe, secure, in your ignorant pocket of peace
But their memories play before your eyes and their nightmare dance on your eyelids
The chop of the fan blades remind you of the planes, menacing overhead and dropping fire from the sky
The popping of kernels from the microwave wring forth panic-- Duck! They’re shooting! Duck for cover, you fool!
The book, it merely fell, but was it truly a book? Or was it the boom of an artillery cannon?
Screams of glee mingle into screams of pain. Your best friend, why don’t you reach out and save him? He’s only a few yards away. He’s in such pain, don’t let him die alone. Don’t let him die like this. Don’t let him die.
Stepping in the puddles makes your skin crawl. You remember their blackened skin, rotted flesh. You step out of the water quickly.
The open water is calm. Peaceful. Under the surface you can see them, the submarines. You move away from the shoreline.
Your friend, hugging you from behind-- it’s their hand, just their hand. There was never a knife. They are your friend. Or are they?
The memories. They’re not yours. Whose are they? Why do they tremble like tenor in your mind, ingrained in your DNA?
The blood on your hands is not there, open your eyes!
The jungle, the desert, the forest, the wasteland. You’re not there, you were never there.
The blood on your hands is not there, open your eyes!
Now the dark, it's suffocating. This is not your world of cracking rawhide and dirt. You were not there, this is not your reality. That white jacket should not make your breath hitch! That burning cross should not terrorize you so!
Now the dark, it's suffocating. This is not your world of fabric stars and canvas trucks. You were not there, this is not your reality. That red armband should not make your breath hitch! That fire should not terrorize you so!
Not a day in your life has this world brought its ugly head to look you dead in the eye and breath upon you, noxious breath liquefying your lungs and dissolving your eyes.
You are safe-- that blood on your hands is not real-- you are safe-- this is not your reality-- how it terrorizes you so!
These memories are not your own.
These memories are not your own.
These memories are not your own.
They are theirs, their memories, and you see them every time you close your eyes.
These memories are not your own.
These memories are not your own.
These memories are not your own.
They are not yours and they never will be.
Dec 30, 2016
Dec 30, 2016 at 3:42 PM UTC
Yes, it's the fifth in the COUNT ORLOK series!
Ah! Sweet Death comes slowly
to my poor victims,
As I **** their lifeblood
through their gargling screams.
How I enjoy their cries
for mercy and compassion,
Just before I give them
eight inches up the ****
CHORUS (Sung to the tune of "Rawhide")
Thrusting, thrusting, thrusting,
Though the smell's disgusting
Yeeha!
I'm evil beyond measure
And I gain my evil pleasure
Through rain and wind and weather,
My shit-splattered **** will never
Forget the pangs of pleasure
Inside...inside...
Yeeeeee-Hawwww!!!!"
*[Orlok wipes crap off vampiric **** and flies off,
the wnd whistling through his gaping zip.]*
Jan 20, 2015
Jan 20, 2015 at 10:52 AM UTC
When I was little I would watch
Clint Eastwood on the tube,
Rowdy Yates from Rawhide
In black and white and crude.
He played a young man showing
All the attributes of youth,
With an exciting way about him
That burned with living truth.
Spontaneously cowboy
And fastidiously right,
He filled the part with action
And the character was tight.
He represented all the things
A small boy wants to be,
Young, bright and coiled to go
A special hero… Just for me.
Through the years I’ve tagged along
Watched him play the arts,
The action roles, the love story
And the recent wrinkly parts.
I’ve loved ‘em all and celebrate
The fifty years of fun
Of trailing after Eastwood
And his epochs in the sun.
Play Misty, Iwo Jima
***** Harry too,
Gran Torino, Million Dollar
Spaghetti westerns through
The Bridges and Rowdy Yates
The common touch in all,
For every day people
In an every way call.
Hero’s come and hero’s go
Some fade away to die
Thank God professionals like Clint Eastwood
Just keep reaching for the sky.
My thanks Old Son.....for a Great Journey!
Marshalg@the Gate
Mangere Bridge
New Zealand
4th February 2009
Jan 22, 2010
Jan 22, 2010 at 3:57 PM UTC
it is 2:23 am
the fan is set on high, despite the fact that the weather outside is -20°
fans are good for these sorts of things
white noise
drowning out the silence
the thoughts the beer brings
thoughts of fools in love in coffee shops
and cynics in tears in basement rooms
and once brave men in coffins
the dog chews on a rawhide bone
and I unbraid my hair
untangling each knot with trembling fingers
I undress slowly
removing each piece of clothing like a memory
I put on that shirt I bought for you
I crawl into bed
smearing plum lips and black eyes on an off-white pillowcase
and I think of once great loves of cynics
I think of coffins
I think of you in light blue
Jan 23, 2014
Jan 23, 2014 at 2:49 AM UTC
Though it's easy to speak of great joy and remember my Savior
I am baffled sometimes yet amused by my own strange behavior
I know, like rawhide I can be rather rough
sand the edges, I've tried, but enough is enough
Let's just cut with the gruff and hang onto the stuff that we favor.
somewhere between nothing and something I'm feeling indifference
to spare you the details I speak in the vagueness of inference.
It's not everyday that we love and we lose
but it happened to me and it's time that I choose
so I'm taking a break cause at stake is my peace and my patience.
I stand at the doorway of reason and see that I'm failing
I know that it's not the right season but want to go sailing.
the edge of the keel will cut through the ice
and time out for healing is always so nice
so besides your advice I will take what is best for my ailing.
Let me drift though the sorrow and sort through the things that I'm feeling
and back here tomorrow I'll help you to paint up the ceiling.
you find yourself working and that is the way
you hold it together and get through the day
but I pray that in play we will both find a good kind of healing.
We all have to cope with these things and we know that it's coming
our lives are like houses, emotions are just like the plumbing.
you plan it all out and try not to rush
keep the lines clear and remember to flush
but all of my gripes are like pipes, clogged and so unbecoming.
Though it's easy to speak of great joy and remember my Savior
I'm baffled sometimes yet amused by my own strange behavior
Oct 15, 2013
Oct 15, 2013 at 1:18 PM UTC
I drove the rental car through a tree
as we continued on towards the ranch.
Saddled up hand measured horses and rode through the park.
Monster trees would have shadowed skyscrapers.
The bravest of birds nested only halfway,
for even feathered wings stall at that altitude.
The damnedest thing was the pine-cones,
golf ball-sized spheres
falling from giants.
It's a bumpy ride on a leather saddle,
a bit painful, too.
You smirked and said you needed a drink,
hell, so did I.
Later in Eureka California we walked to Ray's Saddle,
an old western bar with a wooden red patio,
fake cowboy mannequins gracing the entrance
pistols drawn, not ready to fire.
Our dry mouths megan to irrigate,
our sore bottoms limped through the door,
and the damnedest thing;
the bar stools were rawhide saddles.
Oct 4, 2010
Oct 4, 2010 at 9:22 PM UTC
When the wind whispers o'er the prairie
When the grass swells like the tide
When old leathers mew as they tend to do
When they stretch the fresh rawhide
When the sound of cowboy's jingling spurs
Across the canyons ring
When the cattle bawl their haunting call
These are the sounds of spring
And every spring is round-up time
When cowboys earn their pay
Gathering herds together
And locating every stray
This is a time legends are born
As heroes come to light
In stories cowboys love to tell
Around campfires at night
When cowboys die along the trail
Few monuments are found
They're often buried where they fell
Pushing their herds to town
And though no funeral may prevail
To honor one who rode
New songs and ballads may arise
For that's the cowboy's code
And Mistrels sing in stories true
Plucked on rusty guitars
New tales of cowboy heroes
At rest beneath the stars
Jul 28, 2011
Jul 28, 2011 at 5:03 PM UTC
his rawhide leather
my death wish
burning on a guitar
string
screaming my mouth
black boots
sparrow lips
oil stains
his fingernails are clean
mine aren't
Aug 3, 2010
Aug 3, 2010 at 8:11 PM UTC
Thee gnome had called
hymm mein flatterer, then
an ape fight for quills, to be
or naught, hidden by a hive
patch of bramble. Do ordinance
iris search of apart theorhetic sea,
Adeiu mostly, can wearwolves
as sultry be known to chew
rawhide bones teethlesslee.
Gather by a dared deity
of A Roman's antiquity,
all of course to femine
posterity. An Aye for Aye,
a sythe to seize do naught
ii and cling. For better is yet
to OyYea' and I, causes instantly
be and bee.
cliche toupee'
Jul 1, 2014
Jul 1, 2014 at 9:40 PM UTC
Enslaved within a world of privilege.
Born into a caste.
Forced to dance for others enjoyment.
Persuaded to serve
aching belly
starving
confined.
Languages spoken by the host, which to me seem only foreign.
Tempted by lust withheld for my master exposed.
Chaotic fantasies of a family within the ranks.
By serving you I found my freedom.
Mar 18, 2017
Mar 18, 2017 at 7:42 PM UTC
We live gas station to gas station. Motel to motel. Roleplaying different stories. Living out the bohemian fantasies of a teenage reverie. So when we check out the next morning all these little lives are left behind to exist in the folds where reality meets lazy Sunny D daydreams. And when we are old and grey and return one day to these places in holy reminiscence, our nerves will be pricked with a kaleidoscope of memory jolting sensations. I’ll turn to you and say, “Don’t you remember, my dear?” The honeydew perfume on my wrist as you kissed me up and down like a cartoon in the kitchen of the Sandman Motel? Or the feel of the unpolished, terrazzo floor in the Sunny Moon dining room with my right hand in yours and the other clutching a stolen bottle of my Father’s Aberlour? I’ll remember the times when I didn’t mind the 7/11 taquitos and you didn’t mind getting up early to watch the “Hot Donut’s” sign light in the the Krispy Kreme’s front window. Fresh baked pastries and gasoline and turquoise curtains from the seventies blowing in the hot summer seabreeze. Getting lost in milky sheets. We were a sitcom. We were romance. We were tragedy a la mode with guitar strings built out of rawhide and teeth made of ***** pearls tangled in conspiracy. These are the things I’ll smell, I’ll see, and I will remember when it was just you and me, pretty baby. Just you and me and the ******* Dream, traveling from sea to shining sea, living cheap and easy and utterly free.
May 7, 2019
May 7, 2019 at 7:07 PM UTC
Do not disdain
the mundane
eternal language
of now.
You must
understand that.
The common
is the exquisite.
This is a vivid
new morning.
Flowers open.
Women turnover
in familiar beds
to regard
their lovers anew.
Everything desires
to begin again
just as it was.
Do not disdain
the exquisite intimate
or you will be
lashed to the past
by a rawhide braid
of dead words.
Take joy in what
you are offered.
Flourish where your
seeds have fallen.
Love your world.
~mce
Sep 17, 2015
Sep 17, 2015 at 10:53 AM UTC
Fire and wind
of close bullets
tornados, floods, rain
I. C. E. with eyes
sharp as barbed wire
dead souls walking
those pale corridors
with an odor
the color of bone
and skin off the backs
of the poor
in their pockets
like rawhide, they are
rolling, rolling, rolling
***** of dung along
carrying briefcases
full of batshit
and other secret
pestilence yet to come.
May 21, 2019
May 21, 2019 at 9:19 PM UTC
An angel and a dog sat on a ridge.
Sun set before them;
Cloud stretched from earth to heavens;
Wind came up behind them;
And tousled their fur and feathers.
Said angel to dog,
"You lucky creature of earth.
You never made a choice,
Never had to doubt,
Never bore the burden
Of knowing what life's about."
Replied dog to angel,
"You lucky creature of heaven.
You got to make a choice,
Got to help a man,
Got to soothe his pain
As I but wish I can."
Said once more the angel,
"Of words of thanks
I have been deprived;
Yet you are scratched
And given rawhide."
Replied again the dog,
"Those same hands of man,
That pet and pacify,
My brothers sadly learned
They can beat and vilify."
Shouted angel at dog,
"Consider yourself lucky,
That body is all they mar;
You cannot even fathom
Torturous souls lost to dark."
Evenly dog to angel,
"Am I not of creation?
Am I not creation speaking?
I suffer the blood of my grandfathers,
And of my grandsons.
I know naught else,
But this I know completely."
Snidely angel in retort,
"I see suffering of thousands6—
All the world to lament;
Your grandfather and your son
Are not even a percent."
Somber the dog,
"And you are not an angel,
That is most evident.
Of your choice you live now,
As you died then.
Please leave me now this view,
And my destiny to man's kin."
The angel dropped to the raging sea below,
And flopped in the snow;
In rage he threw the hailstone back,
And before the tempest flew.
The dog sat a while longer,
And admired the peaceful scene;
Till a call came from the woods,
And he sped back with glee.
Sep 26, 2018
Sep 26, 2018 at 2:35 PM UTC
##########;;;;;###########
Trollin' trollin' trollin'
Keep those doggies trollin'
Trollin' trollin' trollin'...
... The LIES!
If they are believin'
Then you can decieve 'em...
You'd better not receive 'em
... bye BYE!!!
SoulSurvivor
Oct 4, 2014
Oct 4, 2014 at 3:36 AM UTC
The world is endlessly white
And gray
And cold
And not much else
It has been this way for so long
Like a thousand-year winter
The light of the sun
Is shining somewhere else
So cold
Everyday
Without end
A tedious repetition
Even the snow days
Do not offer much joy
As they used to
It is still cold
For the first time
In a winter
I long for spring
Like my heat-loving mother
I long for the chirping of birds in the morning
Running barefoot
On sweet green grass in the sun
Burning gold into my hair
I long for summer thunderstorms
And the airy scent of ozone
And mud in my sandals
The bottoms of my feet turning rawhide tough
Vacations in the Outer Banks
And weekends Up North
Charging through the ice-cold river
Chasing minnows and frogs
I cannot remember
The last time
It had been above freezing
The last time I saw the light of day
A nationwide chill
Freezing roads
Into ice slicks
Bringing new records
The polar vortex
I will be telling the future generations
Of your ice
And snow
But then it begins to happen
Ever so slowly
But we notice
And rejoice like children
One warm day here
And another here
Like hopscotch
With the ice in between
And at last we break free
At least here we did
Digging out the bikes and running shoes
And raincoats long lost
I walk through the town again of my free will
The birds are singing again
I'm pretty sure they're rejoicing too
The thousand-year winter has ceased
Apr 3, 2014
Apr 3, 2014 at 1:21 PM UTC
The day you left me
Was the day all the stars
Had been shaken from the sky
leaving me to walk the ****** road
In the dark where God’s harrowed
sword plunged deep into my chest
Where rebellious poetry whispered in my ear
Taught me how to redress this acrimony
With rawhide strings
That pluck
That toll
That chime
That ring
A song that would end the world
Built by Satan
Where snakes sift in and out
Between lines of love and malevolence
Awakening
The first shudder of eyelids to
Newborn wilderness
Ears quivering to the notes
Of sweet abandon
A female wailing
Animalistic sort of cry
This monster, in Eden, this Eve without Adam
Resurrected, a girl without temptation
Who is ready to survive.
Apr 9, 2019
Apr 9, 2019 at 1:40 PM UTC
I am swiss cheese I am somebody who is trying to relocate their shoulders, thrown about in a misty sin of congratulations
I am a sipless vulture attempting to be pure but coming out vinegar
juniper berries and sickly **** of packaged rawhide
inescapable landslide
unexcused, for what its worth
an imaginging roller coaster disaster, so far from my fathers, mad from too much beer and wine
hankered down by mood stabilizing pills
jipless, jockeyed, jiving to bizzare melodies
a sipter esphicator, ready to lunge into the excesses of butter beer
singing jollies with dumbeldore and other queers
misplelled, misplaced, outcast, on the bench with other pupils
and the carnivore sinks its teeth into its kills
shanking and shaking, singing in the bathtub with katy perry
muse the blues with cherub rock, loathing dylan, asking for more cohen
juxtaposed on top of everest and demanding a double feature
dickless angels
turnabout, shout, the end is near, abstract, understand the notion, the fear
and scream helpless hopless empty bottles of beer
nectar and graham the hector, a mellon bunnie with rabbid ears
run for your life! the fires of eternal flowers and bounds of life
seem sophisticated at the time
Turnabout, the beats are out
and the real madness, the real madness, is here
Sep 16, 2015
Sep 16, 2015 at 10:33 PM UTC
he threw me someone else's line and
warm gloves,
said he knew I'd like it and of course,
of course I did.
always felt plaques and rawhide a
knitted blanket colored severely a)
because why not , the phrase is only
a small fish flipping his **** in a bag,
so much stronger than he looks and
b) i can live off the love of a salamander,
off the rain of one cartoon cloud!
just ... -
put some sugar in the gas tank,
make out with your image
and count to, like, uh hundred.
Oct 27, 2015
Oct 27, 2015 at 10:08 AM UTC
We're not rawhide like cowboys
But we like denim too you know
Jul 30, 2018
Jul 30, 2018 at 6:11 PM UTC
this is an autobiography
that was never meant to be
by ruined writing
in close proximity to my imagined enemies
most people look at you and see
what they want to see
what they want you to be
when they try to talk to me
like I’m coasting in fantasy
like I live in liquid dreaming
like the point wasn’t missed completely
like I love to hate myself constantly
destroying yourself is easy
when you already live in hiding
learn this, protest that,
protest, protest, protest
with plastic signs over the child labor on your back
do your best and use all your influence to help
when your done throw all the clothes and signs in the trash
use, use, use, each piece of your contracted shell
let me come into this, let me come help
a barn-burning beast/\waving a rawhide flag in hell
and in the confusion of the swell
the world would pause in violet while i immolate myself
I just want God to help
finish what he started
when he crafted a trenchant well
filled it with poison(left to our own devices)
formed a base with rotting corpses(and the wings of fallen angels)
then crafted a mountain of material wealth
where he strokes his giant Lucifer
over the sad orphan eyes of heavens window wells
teach us something that is ******* worth knowing
away from self importance through blunted stories
please show me - echelon these KINGS
faceless banners raising war torn cities inside of me
or show us how to take old bones from peaceful death
and transmute them +multiply them into water and bread
or how to relieve out my pores
and bleed out this stress
or to how fall onto the floor
and end up somewhere next to heaven
lights:
friends of friends of friends, magnanimous pretense
exit, we escape to enter again
nights:
drinks and lead
absinthe, escaped just to enter again
life:
it’s reaching for a bottle high up on a shelf
Never learned how to live after spilling milk
makes me panic hard alone and wanna **** myself
death:
glasshouse debris pours out
and the skin won’t grow back
nails curl onto coffin doors
with all the SAD/] SAD\[/SADDD
where the parasites are only Jesus
with diamond fangs and silver masks
Jul 20, 2015
Jul 20, 2015 at 1:49 PM UTC
We cure the meat with coarse rock salt, malt vinegar,
coriander, black pepper, garlic, paprika, and time.
We cure the meat until it’s a dried-out husk of rawhide,
until it’s inured against the winter, the rough journey ahead.
We can’t inure ourselves so easily, brine ourselves
against the bacteria and contaminants, and harshness of life.
Nov 16, 2020
Nov 16, 2020 at 3:16 AM UTC