tall in the saddle

 

 

 

When each season of getting older wears on you

like an overpass, angry with cement;

angered by the Pinto's

and Mavericks that detroit built

only to disintegrate like

unmerciful leftovers. Randolph Scott

didn't grow old after "The Shoot Out At Medicine Bend"

but after "Gung-Ho",

because the wars you pretend

are the same ones that age you. The

romanticized gall of it is what

makes you kiss the girls

that arch their backs. You can

damn well tell when the tongues of

actors don't touch,

and what kind of passionate kiss is it anyway

when tongues refuse to;

when the kiss wont send you

flying over waterfalls, scurrying

thru the Easter lilies to

plant poems to the jarred mercy

of John Ford landscapes? What kind of

sex is it that keeps your gloves dry in

a porcelain snowball fight, where across your

oak face, there is a smell of burning leaves?

 

(2)

 

Grandma pried the dogs apart with

hot water and probing fingers, through which,

the wet grassy smear quietly avoids sentimentality.

There's something mutually haunting

about a backwards embrace. Dogs enter

a dark place before sex. A thorny curved

drifting elegance, that above all else,

beneath the exchanged secrets of angels,

just feels damn good.

 

But you don't have to be a dog to endure it.

I droll of fortune though, all or none,

disenchangingly, a universe of misty

customary dreams. I shave all the bones I bless,

unlock loneliness from the clawed digits that

clutch. Taste my prejudice self

with a rambling tongue that investigates. Then

Flick the you of exaggerative substances, with the

paws of quadruped tenderness.

Reviews

[Marie Anzalone]

If it makes a man feel any better as a man, I tell you, my dear friend, that the best sex this woman ever had was with men over the age of 48. Some things crumble and disintegrate with age, and some others mature like so much good liquor in fine aged oaken barrels. What we lose is shame, maybe gaining in abandon? We no longer feel the need to apologize for our flaws, and thus, can be more ourselves, more adventurous, with our partners. A man over 50 does not expect perfection form me; he expects to be held in the dark and promised the night, knowing it is beyond our reach often to offer the whole world. The dogs only hide because they are thigmotactic; the walls of the shrubbery make them feel more secure. A very fine work, my friend.

[Corset]

best I could do was give Marie a thumbs up on this review, both of you on point and perfect.

[kollaboratyve]

Grandma pried the dogs apart with hot water and probing fingers, I smiled when I read this stanza..I hane seen this with my own eyes..good abstract piece

[Norah]

LOVE it, excellent job :)

[Tree]

I can now see the bend in the road up ahead, and I think of my father. My brothers, friends and l still talk about him as if he were myth. I remember too well all his faults but the man knew how to overshadow those. I can't think of anyone better to emulate on how best to handle those later years than him; well, maybe Sean Connery (Dad's favorite actor) or Ricardo Montalban ( Dad's favorite actor), or that guy from the dos xx''s commercials: The most interesting man in the world. could it be all about perception though? Because my mom definitely has a different view point, though on some things she would have to agree. And trying to ride tall in the saddle is one of them, however good though my dad was at rolling with the punches You know those last years were hard on him; he, was beat.... Where you wrote What kind of sex is it that keeps your gloves dry in a porcelain snowball fight,/ where across your oak face,/ there is a smell of burning leaves? left me wondering about the fate that beholds us men in those final years. and how will we choose to ride into that night and whether anger or stoicism or maybe even some laughter, or maybe some residual resentment, will grace our faces during that final ride.
I thought part two of your poem was a subtle and a deft shift in the movement of this piece, its tone. Felt like when you've just watched a good scene in a movie and then the director adds to it with another, to re enforce the moving nature of the first.


nice work here, brother.

Diego

[W.k.kortas]

Well, that second stanza gives "tall in the saddle" a new meaning, doesn' it? I suppose living in Detroit (and, an aside, I owned both a Maverick and a Pinto at different times) pushes one toward a certain fin-de-siecle outlook on things as a matter of course, and that resonates all through the piece--the aging Randolph Scott (RANDOLPH SCOTT!!!), the rotting corpses of cars that were dead from day one, the "smell of buring leaves." The juxtaposition of dogs rutting and "the exchanged secrets of angels" in the final stanza..well, that's simply the work of a master of his craft. Perhaps, in a certain carnal sense of the word, you may not be everything you once were (and, after eighteen, what man is?), but as far as this writing thing goes, you're at the top of your game.

[Emily B]

god, you make me believve in the power of the living word like very few ever have, your voice is taller than a mountain here and it was an absolute joy to climb

[jacob erin-cilberto]

I think the older we get the more we appreciate the kiss...

I was raised catholic...so we already appreciated early on....it was all we could do besides a bit of a pet, and confession the next day...

but I think physical-ness is actually appreciated more as we get older...and the expectations become less...which is probably a good thing...let's us just enjoy what there is.

really liked this piece...

[Cory Barrett]

I feel like a groupie. Every time i leave the same exclamation of "oh my god it so good, i want to lick the screen so that i can taste the sound of your words". That's just it. Another piece that i could read until believe that in my imperfection it is better to be a dog than an Oscar winner. Better to live and feel the dark place, than paste centerfold cut outs on the inside of my eye lids. Better to let those eyes roll back and accept all that living and humanity is, inhaling ever dirty-beautiful aroma that we are. Exhaling with a roar in my throat so that i might return the favor dealt to me.

[Delmar Cooper]

Hell of a poem. I like your fearlessness, it's like courage without the debate.