... from West Texas

Rockstar or a Felon

Pile of birds at its perfect base

Crucifix smile ‘cross its spinning face

The white windmill ‘pon the hill

A summer in Texas and now, at summer’s end, a form to fit the time and place, set and setting. An ode to a peculiar locale on the panhandle, in the heart of the South Plains, or Llano Estacado (“staked plains”), so named because the land is so flat and featureless that “ancient Mexicans”¹ marked their routes across it with stakes, à la Theseus and Ariadne. Quoth Bob Wills, “King of Western Swing” and one of many minstrels of these plains: “Perhaps it is the great emptiness of the prairies that prompts men to lift their voices to dispel the silence, perhaps it is the simple pleasure of living freely under changing skies.”²

---

Rockstar or a Felon

There once was a child his hair it grew black
It bloomed and a-flowed down her face.
His bird said a prayer and their saint sang a song
And a secret was kept to the grave.
Hallelujah, hallelujah the sun queen has come
Hallelujah, hallelujah here comes the son… 

The witching hour in forgotten city of heartland, 
Cricket song and three kings by the mantelpiece 
Covered with snow. Do divulge your secrets young one 
The answer’s far too old:
Two ways to end up on these eye-for-eye plains, 
Rock star in a plane crash or a felon. 
If you're asking me I’ll say certainly 
A wager is better than nothing. 

Flatrock, caprock, bigrock, bedrock – some rock, a staked plain, sloping tablewise 10 ft/mile down to ruffled fallings-off in mid country hill country. Heart of the south plains, where flatness and heat become general, so too the pump jack’s silent pounding and dust clouds kicked up by monocultural excess. The culture is far out and the fear is near. No trees no flow no nothing no deer.  
The rook pauses beneath the trebled eaves, considering the low-pitched roof. Long-forgotten railroad men made their first proofs amidst these tottering piles of cotton, pushed west by floods and keys and Lockes. Still importing Old World revival styles, circular staircases too. 

The town itself, Lubbock-named, 
Derives from some such host. 
He might have beheld a haboob afar, 
Mistook it for the coast. 
Haboob, the lawyer says the name 
As if a turtle dove, 
Haboob? she does repeat aghast, 
I do not feel the love. 
The newling raised his head 
And saw Madonna ‘pon the plain. 
She straddled easily a mount 
Said they’re coming quick be brave. 

Turtles spilled forth into technified gyre, rolling down the perfect trapezoid. The announcer hooted, the boozers hollered, and the racehorses sprinted forth. In one near corner “Moustache Rider” was finna make a stand, his head poked out, his legs were short, it was hard to understand. 

Where you can see further and less than anywhere on earth, 
A Comanche illumined behind the play. 
His headdress sank into his skin, 
Concessions littered plastic tray. 
He’d ridden many a mile hence, 
His horse it had grown lame, 
Till encountering a fence, 
He hung his head: shame! 

Land practices and the illusion of ancient prelapsarian virginity – untamed wilderness, they say, with nary a hand to till, but fires raged on purpose then and the hills moved in time to winds in which all took a part. 

The sun a shining glint upon
The marker standing there
The hare does pause and lift its ears
A hee haw sounding from the fair
A bison leg, if you please,
Said Craig the kitchen’s wife
A bison leg, said old Craig
The bastard of the butcher’s wife.
I’ll have a spear of celery instead 
Said his mother with a hoot.
Mesas red and long they throng
Toward distant mountain buttes.
Disturbingly her shaded brow 
The sun was getting on, 
Behind the grass, the trees, a pond, 
Before: nothing. On. 
Oh Louisiana how far you seem 
All Mississippi New Orleans 
Last oaks spread broad enshadery
Then hills with nothing in between.

The land cast off its garments Lear and took panhandle in iron fist, it shook it once it shook it fast then all returned to dirt. Europe hasn’t seen dirt like this since imagined Babylon and the bush, to it she returns unknown somehow Joseph Smith among the first. 
Hot overhead grey hooser-kin oft-swindled and dissected. In the felim drethers stir morous helmspringings – ai, Cassius Clay! You won’t be taking my head today, not today it’s turning gray, turning gray from day to day; oft malingered, by the way, spimmiously frimmeled and trabailed – gin turns to melancholy thoughts, aye dear mistletoe? A faltering halter fell upon upturned ears. All about the glen stirred and murmured mountains far beyond – a tremulous unbecoming falling-down and into – a k hole that’s what it’s called – no it’s more like… its more than that—

Heads stalk these streets in search of meat 
And meanwhile all games play hide and seek – 
On repeat our world’s chronic scenes 
Drifting about from mien to mien. 
People come to vote for policies 
They don’t like back home. 
They come they stay they bring their shit, 
Can’t get it through their dome. 
But jobs are cheap and money’s fast 
The border’s ever nearer, 
Till waking once we find remaining
No further crystal mirror. 
Wanderingly and dazed 
The desert takes us to its breast, 
Till finding ‘cross a sin-kissed veil 
The one who loves you best. 
Shepherds and swine remain 
And the Judge who does not die, 
Announcing from upon her throne 
When it’s time to cry. 

(She bends an ear to treasurer whose mind is off in Greenwich, he tells her wear your Sunday best he scurries out before the bailiff calls the room to stand, a golden guilty hand on outer door. And this and so much more.)

Come in come in the Judge decides 
All liveried in black, 
You must learn to dance before 
You ever shall come back. 
Isaiah he comes in once more  
Stares DA in face, 
Fuck this, he says, Callooh, Callay! 
I pray judge says desist. 
That’s some prayer the cop does grin 
Aside to blighted pen. 
Come back again another day 
We shall begin again. 

(The Bill of Rights is fixed to canyon walls with big metal brackets. Even here?! a child cries. Don’t look now, don’t even close your eyes.) 
Snippets of laughter sputtered in the static, the hand clasped the steel, and foam became general. Under quarantine the armistice lasted as long as it needed to, and you’re just as far away as ever from Colorado. 

Thoreau himself in padlocked bower 
Did spend a night in chains, 
Protesting dread Tejano war 
Waged on ghostly plain. 
He raised his head as if to say 
This is all we need, 
But beauty scalped and lands did splay 
Before the great white steed. 
The whale itself might say something 
Nantucket sharks so too, 
But think again said downy hen 
To them it’s all just blue. 
Cowboys first made the rounds 
Then oil prospectors with tacks, 
Texas Rangers just put you down
What false-eyed clergy lack. 
Blood ties win at last 
‘Ccording to ornery clerks of banks, 
Kinship does outrun it all  
With pointed head-like rattlesnake. 

24 carat bum picks the fence line clean, wondering alone and lost what any of it could mean. When came a maid of fortune fair with daffodils for eyes, and took them by the hand and found the land of no sunrise. Then came a snake as slick as ice that slithered ‘cross the road, and mothers quaked and fathers cried and they heard a distant groan. When weathered skin and hazy days put Marie dear to rest along against the other side, concave and then convex. That happiness could last I find quite queasy and quite strange. Three granaries doth stand stock still as this bridge becomes a hill. 

The bushes stamp the vague sunlight
They fix it to their form 
And in the wispy space therein
You too can be reborn.
But nothing sufficed the mournful girl
Who scorned the cup of ice
And whispered down along the line 
She’d had enough of life.
Prickly slivered moons yet shine, 
Wildcats still howl, 
Dogs bark ‘hind wooden gates, 
The state is on the prowl. 
You got two choices, kid, Robe said:
A rock star or a felon. 
I don’t make the rules  
You can appeal once you’re in heaven. 
The day the music finally died 
She laid it down to rest. 
Bless you child, lay your head, 
Rage easy in your rest.

---

What We Been Grokking

Pueblo potters, the creators of petroglyphs and oral narratives, never conceived of removing themselves from the earth and sky. So long as the human consciousness remains within the hills, canyons, cliffs, and the plants, clouds, and sky, the term landscape, as it has entered the English language is misleading: “A portion of territory the eye can comprehend in a single view” does not correctly describe the relationship between the human being and his or her surroundings. This assumes the viewer is somehow outside or separate from the territory he or she surveys… Ancient Pueblos took the modest view that the thing itself (the landscape) could not be improved upon. — Pueblo poet Leslie Marmon Silko

… that peculiarly American incongruity: kitsch showing its tawdry face as a way of acknowledging there is no adequate response in our vernacular to this landscape, that nothing can touch the authenticity around it—thus the neon of Vegas, the motels of Flagstaff, the diners of Elko, two pink plastic flamingos on the sandy bank of the Humboldt — Rebecca Solnit, Savage Dreams

They grew gaunted and lank under the white suns of those days and their hollow burnedout eyes were like those of noctambulants surprised by day… They entered the city haggard and filthy and reeking with the blood of the citizenry for whose protection they had contracted. The scalps of the slain villagers were strung from the windows of the governor’s house and the partisans were paid out of the all but exhausted coffers and the Sociedad was disbanded and the bounty rescinded… they rode out on the north road as would parties bound for El Paso but before they were even quite out of sight of the city they had turned their tragic mounts to the west and they rode infatuate and half fond toward the red demise of that day, toward the evening lands and the distant pandemonium of the sun. — Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

—DVD

1. Albert D. Richardson, Beyond the Mississippi (1867)

2. Men? we might add. And freely? Not in today’s economy.