FOLK COLLECTION 11: The Skaggs Foundation Cowboy Poetry Collection

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Buck Ramsey's Poetry Inventory

Buck Ramsey

FOLK COLL 11 R-48

244

Buck Ramsey

Bad Job (Bum Thinking Nowhere Near a Horse)

If you see me sittin' sorrowful, all busted up and stove-up And you wonder how a puncher gits that way, I can tell you at the start-off to avoid all work aground If you rope and ride ahorseback for yore pay.

barrel, rodeo, bucked

Buck Ramsey's Poetry Inventory

Buck Ramsey

FOLK COLL 11 R-48

246

Buck Ramsey

Dunder Defining (Being a one-sided conversation with the Kid about his daddy)

"Yeah he'd be called a 'daisy hand' If this was bygone days Before the meanings changed their names And cowboys changed their ways.

names, cowboy, tradition

Buck Ramsey's Poetry Inventory

Buck Ramsey

FOLK COLL 11 R-48

248

Buck Ramsey

Bonnie Trina

She was giving birth to her first child when Bonnie Trina died, All the leaves were out, the trees were full of flowers. She had known the Fiddle all her life, had two years been his bride, But the time had seemed more like a few good hours.

death, child, brith

Buck Ramsey's Poetry Inventory

Buck Ramsey

FOLK COLL 11 R-48

252

Buck Ramsey

Poem Notes

When he was 92, George Hayden told me As a young cowpuncher he roped a black bear Close to where I live. Back then it was out on the plain The closest brush miles north in the river breaks.

poem, notes, ranch

Buck Ramsey's Poetry Inventory

Buck Ramsey

FOLK COLL 11 R-48

254

Buck Ramsey

Names And Callin's

They're always atellin' us who is a cowboy. It's always somebody who ain't. They put our good name on the damndest of fellers -- it passes without a complaint.

cowboy, appearance, reputation

Buck Ramsey's Poetry Inventory

Buck Ramsey

FOLK COLL 11 R-48

256

Buck Ramsey

Untitled

Some cowboy come crossing a big rancher's land He said he just figured he'd misread a brand Well they took loose the calf's and they noosed up his head

rancher, cowboy, calf, brand

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Bingo In The Church Basement

"I-19 - under the I, 19 - 1-19," the Knights of Columbus grand pooh-bah crooned into the mike, his Sinatra-suave mimicry pole-axed by a cross between a Richard Boone and Bogie voice. Zinc

bingo, lose, betting, elderly

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Riding Double - 16 And Beating The Heat

She loved my black Triumph motorcycle, flamed orange and chromed, my Brando jacket, all nine zippers half-unzipped - leather and chest hair her long-nailed fingers prowled like barracuda. Doing 95 through a 92 degree wave,

youth, motorcycle, love

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Hurley High

Though the nuns had dubbed us crusaders in the war against puberty, we gladly lost to testosterone and Pabst Blue Ribbon rumbling in our blood. We sang the dirty version of "Louie Louie" gung ho with elocution

nuns, hormones, teens

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Scars Poetica

Brushed over with arm hair, the nickel-cigar scars I've not told a sober soul about since the sixties, until now, until finding myself hanging by a hemp thread between

scars, bar, biker

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Zarzyski Meets The Copenhagen Angel

Her Levis, so tight I can read the dates on dimes in her hip pocket. Miles City, a rodeo Saturday night.

flirt, dates, bar

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Riding Double-Wild

She's a motorcycle sister He's a bareback bronco twister They're ridin' double-wild 'cross the West.

motorcycle, fashion, choppers

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Why I like Butte! - Or, "How She Goin' Today, Just?"

From the Gogebic Iron Range - "shaking ground," in Ojibwa - across open range of the Plains Indian

bar, phonebook, friends

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

The Poet & The Picker

On that bright night when Music gives a lift to lonesome Poetry hitchhiking 40 light years of bad road, it isn't long before they find out stars are nothing less than hot-note reflections of polished chrome.

music, guitar, jewel

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Monte Carlos Express - POst Office Box 258, 15.3 Miles Home

I've checked fence doing 80 in a low-rider Chevrolet springing the borrow pit like a pack mule that hates crossing running water.

gamble, booze, mail

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

"The Car That Brought You Here Still Runs"

It takes more than gasoline and gumption to get you to Zortman - more than whimsy or a wild inkling to rekindle history. It takes a primal prairie hunkering in sunless gulches, a longing of short Fourth of July parades, the best-kept-secret cafe with a waitress who commutes 50 miles from Malta -

breakfast, diner, mouth

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

The Day Beelzebub Gave His Jezebel A Hotfoot...

... it was 52 below zero in Butte, Montana where they took them an eternity to drive up through froze over, their fire-engine-red Firebird vapor-locking to a frigid halt as they unwittingly drove beneath Our Lady Of The Rockies - Snow White with an attitude, all ninety blessed feet and eighty steel virgin tons of her standing vigil over the Berkeley Pit.

devil, winter, truck

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

The Capital Of Montana (A "Found Poem")

Picture her printing this in the skimpy margins of a dollar bill - cockeyed George cracking, under magnification, the semblance of a devilish grin -

dollar, sex, waitress

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Making Her Day

When Dorothy, queen of the drive-thru bank tellers, looks cyborg-bored going about her ad nauseam rote goldfish-in-a-bowl motions, I whip my viper-red Monte Carlo lowrider, its shark's-snout hood with chrome sneer,

bank, drive-thru, humor

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Hot Loaves In The Monte Carlo

In part, because Christ chose hearty bread to complement both the fishes and the wine, because Charlie Russell named his favorite horse Monte, loved Christmas, and Great Falls is Kid Russell's hometown,

christmas, alcohol, drink mix

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Linguistics

Spitting a mouthful of clothespins like a goalie spitting teeth, the first time Mother strung curse words with God's name in vain, she was hanging sheets, the clean smell of 20 Mule Team Borax

language, bird, laundry

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

The Whale In My Wallet

We're talking humpbacks, not greenbacks, but I'm still sitting fat packing only his flukes - biggest fingerprints you ever saw high-fiving me or, should I say "two-hi-ing" me out of the gray

wallet, sailor, boat

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Zeke Zarzyski

Zeke, hung over, with me and Liz in tow, plows his way into a faux-fern bar bistro arf-arfing his favorite cow dog yarn about the dude who strolled into a Browning, Montana

cowdog, bar, humanization

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

A Lesson In Animal Zen

Built for full-grown cattle, the alley-way to the squeeze chute is far more than just a Hereford hair too wide for the five-seven-ten head of calves not at all funneling smoothly into single file, doing their best worst

cattle chute, animals, cowboy

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Photo Finish

Because a horse cannot see its own nose, the bell mare stares at herself mesmerized in the mirrored glass vet clinic door - fixates so firmly

race horse, trailer, vet