Posted on March 4th, 2010 by Monsieur K.
Blind Willie Johnson
Huddled in the ruins of his
burned-out Beaumont home,
not a single goddamed place to go,
turned out from the infirmary
for being black and blind
and not worth saving,
shivering in a rain-soaked bed,
too sick to go sing on his corner,
the milky water filling those
strong, beautiful lungs.
Blind Willie Johnson,
shaking and trembling,
thinking back on a ravaged life,
back to strumming [...]
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Posted on February 25th, 2010 by Monsieur K.
Elmore James
bleary-eyed
on tub-stilled shine,
passing a bottle back to
the ghost of Robert Johnson,
barreling down a dusty, yellow,
washboard Mississippi backroad,
heart shuddering in his chest,
all the screws shaking loose,
he slides that ‘39 Merc
across the terrible frets
of the American night,
past the crossroads,
hungry and desperate for
more liquor, more money, more women,
more anything-to-make-him-forget,
more he-don’t-even-know-what,
and in the backseat,
the ghost of Robert Johnson
downs [...]
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Posted on May 22nd, 2009 by Monsieur K.
Edgewood
It was the damnedest thing–
we’d lost a few head of Brahman
out there past the Culbertson place,
& this one in particular, beautiful gray one,
her bones knuckled up against the
underside of her pelt as she rotted,
like brambles under a half foot of snow,
that ol’ hide stretched taut enough
for a stray cat to hide her winter litter
right in the hollow, nestled there
‘tween the brisket & flank,
under that stinky ol’ leathery tarp,
just enough shelter to make it ’til Spring…
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Posted on May 22nd, 2009 by Monsieur K.
Truth or Consequences
…it’s the salt cedar–thick, suffocating, merciless–
plain as mineral striations on each lakeside cliff,
Elephant Butte is dying…
& it’s the goddamned salt cedar,
it’s furious thirst respecting nothing,
it’s furious thirst murdering the Bosque,
leaving only saturated silt banks,
sand against sedimentary clay…
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Posted on March 31st, 2009 by Monsieur K.
Billy the Kid
terrified to die,
terrified of being forgotten,
carves his name
in sandstone.
from 37 psalms from the Badlands.
Kendra Steiner Editions
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Posted on March 31st, 2009 by Monsieur K.
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Posted on March 31st, 2009 by Monsieur K.
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Posted on March 23rd, 2009 by Monsieur K.
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Posted on March 21st, 2009 by Monsieur K.
The small press is full
of pretty good poets. Most fit into some category, offer up some personasome image of toughness, craziness, some sort of dysfunctional characteristic. Today it is easier to do that with the internet. In my search, I run across a lot of good poetry, but a lot of the time the voice could belong to anyone and despite wanting the coveted image to come through, a fakeness prevails. Perhaps one of today’s best small press poets, William Taylor Jr. pointed me in the direction of Hosho McCreesh, and listed him as one of his favorites. I picked up his seventh book, For All These Wretched, Beautiful, & Insignificant Things So Uselessly & Carelessly Destroyed sat down on my front porch Adirondack poured a glass of cheap wine and took a look at life through Hosho’s eyes. It was like seeing fine art for the first time. Not throwing out a line of kiss ass here– just fact. The voice comes out of this book as fresh but one you identify with.
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Posted on March 19th, 2009 by Monsieur K.
Devil’s-Claw-Jemez-Dirt | Painting by Hosho McCreesh
Ponderosa, NM
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