Blanche Remembers the Long Ride
Dreams, / Dreams go on,
Out of the dead on their backs,
Broken and no use any more:
Dreams of the way and the end go on.
"Among the Red Guns," Carl Sandburg
I used to believe in love the way believers play their faith,
close to the chest, fanning it out when they need it most.
I could have used some back there when my mother sold me
for a song, a hard-handed man he broke me surely,
no more hopes for children or a tender word at best.
My daddy was a kind man but so poor he could not cope
with anything but slow tilling of the barren soil
sun-up, sun-down, wind that brought the farm indoors,
the only thing that saved him was his deathlike sleep, yet
dreams, dreams go on.
Never expected what love was really like,
how it pulled me to him like a chigger to the hairline,
his warm brown eyes, his hands that mastered anything
he put his mind to, we had such plans for living, he and I,
among the woodland bright safe places far away from all
we'd known before, we would be fine and free, we said so
all the nights in tourist camps where we would lie awake
and listen to the passing cars, the storm of bullets and
the blood that burst in streams upon the floor
out of the dead on their backs.
Who would have known how bad it would become,
the nights I'd sit up on the car and watch the stars,
the taste of terror in my throat and gore on my thin hands,
some nights I could not see the moon for all the horror in the way.
Or maybe it was hunger or the endless sleepless days
when all we had was fame and not the kind I ever wanted:
outlaw woman, they didn't even know my real name.
I would have gone most anywhere with Buck but
they would not let me be there at the end, we were both
broken and no use any more.
When we first met upon the road in sad West Dallas
he was the most beautiful man I'd ever seen, he loved me so.
Even my daddy liked him: he was good all the way to bone.
Went to serve out his whole term because I asked.
I wish he'd stayed there now, or maybe gone to school
or left his kin behind, it was all on goddamn Clyde
what happened, we were doomed, I knew it from the start.
There was so much to hope for in those dusty early days,
his arms around me, all the future still to come.
Dreams of the way and the end go on.
Bonnie, Awake in Dexfield Park
I swear I heard the lions calling
though I know for sure the zoo's been gone for years
it was as clear as daylight with the highstrung moon,
the stars so still I tried to stir the waters of the sky
with just my finger-tip
to lean down over Buck and see inside his brain
it was a fever. all else were asleep,
it was my job to watch. I did not mind it.
hours passed as easy as a dream.
the only thing I'd ever tell was this:
the hoot owl sailing by?
I thought it was his spirit running free
Henry Barrow
1.
Ever see a horse run?
Teeth just grinding air, shine
coming off it like a blazing afternoon.
I wanted one of them.
First day I went to school
I fainted straight upon the ground,
never went back, never learned to read.
What good would it have been to me?
To see my boys' dark history there,
the blood upon their heads and hands
and all the weeping in the world
fell down around my head
and in my house.
The only time we found some happiness
we had just wed, and then we had but five good years
til it was done.
2.
I could never buy a horse,
but went to church and did the proper thing.
I married Cumie, she was 16 and under five feet tall.
She was a rock to me for all her days.
I started with a rented field
and babies, we had seven:
Jack and Artie, Buck and Nell,
Clyde, LC and Marie, all of them lived
to talk of it: hunger, constant moving,
no time for dreaming.
Jesus watched us every day.
3.
They call me quiet. It was true.
I laboured til I dropped.
Cumie made our children go to church
and school, she made those children mind.
My daddy never hit me
the way her daddy done,
a whipping sets them straight I guess
though it never fell to me.
I was too busy on the journey to provide.
We never had the time to play or watch them grow,
there was no room for grace
nor kindliness
nor hope
4.
They grew up, got away to town,
I worked until my hands were bloody bones
and still I tilled the soil
til the cotton root rot came
and weevils ate the rotted crop right off.
We moved to Dallas, to the Bog
and started there again,
through illness and the dusty storms
my children did provide for me just fine:
I was a scrap dealer and
a station owner
and sometimes I sold hooch.
I drank some too, some days.
5.
Our boys would drive their flashy cars
and dress real well,
they told me it would work just fine:
there would be land, a pasture with deep shade,
the things I'd wanted in a life
but I saw them in the ground before their time
We bought one stone for Buck and Clyde
I did not shed a tear
sat still with Cumie while she mourned
my head held low
as fits a man without one stroke of luck
