FOLK COLLECTION 11: The Skaggs Foundation Cowboy Poetry Collection

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Book Title

Composer

Call #

Pages

Author

Poem Title

First Lines

Keywords

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Porch Light Web

All summer long the miller moths crap their muddy watercolor crap between brush strokes of pricey oil paintings adorning my living room walls, goddamn pointillism-tainting dust-bag vagabonds -

web, spider, moths

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Of Man And Mouse

In their itsy-bitsy bucktoothed brainpans my humble abode becomes Sun City, Arizona, Cancun, Bermuda, Honolulu, a Carnival Cruise rodent reunion on the Queen Gouda to Velveetaville

winter, blankets, mice

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Cantankerous-N-Rank!

Cantankerous-n-rank, So cantankerous-n-rank: the cowboy walks the ranching plank, Some days his heart so dark, so dank, He ain't so suave, he ain't so swank, He's just so blankety blankety blank Guldang... cantankerous-n-rank - He's cantankerous-n-rank!

ranch plank, tools

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

After Sipping Chardonnay And Talking Art, Tossin' Shots Poetically At Doc Holliday's

Because Mike Sarich knows Carmen, the bartender, who just so happens to love artists inside and out, the same way Sarich adores a '47 Harley Kucklehead, tonight is our Lady Luck night in Reno.

bar, alcohol, art

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Yevgeny Alexandrovich Yevtushenko: Cowboy Poet

Purring growl of your Russian tongue makes love to our women, suddenly erumpent and churning erotic in public. Once they were sweet cream butter melting to our Dutch oven touch under slow even-burning coals of mesquite,

russian, cowboy poet, flirt

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

Martini McRae & Whiskey Zarzyski: A Brace of Blackjack Aces

Three mush-hearted dealers changed careers 'cause they couldn't gut the cruelty and the guilt. The pit boss's shot-glass eyes broke to tears watching, wrinkle-by-wrinkle, two cowpoke poker faces wilt.

blackjack, trauma, losing

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

Paul Zarzyski

The Elko Ecdysiast - or, What Happens in Elko Ain't Staying in Elko

Redefining "shock-n-awe," the stripper, on break, takes a seat at our front-row, center-stage table out of the bluest blue, making us believe in life after death, patron saints of dumb luck,

stripper, lust, steer

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

102

Paul Zarzyski

Calico Fever Blues

He's got the calico fever blue-oos From his Stetson to his horse's shoe-oos

love, blues, breakup

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

104

Paul Zarzyski

Pomes

I've played Vegas and I'm itching to boldly say no way poetry ever will outstrut, outbluff, outmuscle, outpoint, outshoot, outpitch, outshimmy, outshine cleavage -

brothel, poems, metaphor

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

108

Paul Zarzyski

Long Sagebrush Drives - An Adrenaline-Induced, Testosterone-Fueled, Buckin'-Hoss-Twister, Roughstockaholic Jabberwocky-Rap

Six roughstock buck-offs in a land-barge Ford Six riggin' bags cached in the trunk Umpteen go-arounds, none of us scored Our riggin's all leaked and we sunk -

rap, truck, cowboys

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

110

Paul Zarzyski

Super-Grooving in the "Voodoo Lou"

Even the wind we bucked is blown away by million-decibel Rolling Stones (nope, not singing Bob Nolan's "Tumbling Tumbleweeds")

car, road trip, cowboy music

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

112

Paul Zarzyski

Rodeo Poet Barnstormer

Eighty-nine copies of your latest alliterative lariati title - sans remaining space for one more iambic molecule of mold or mildew, one more fly-poop-period-gone-wild black speck - crammed into the Genuine Split Cowhide

airline, dream, airport

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

114

Paul Zarzyski

The Passion of the Toast

Now let us pray and let us pay kudos to the new flimflammer champ of the entrepreneurial universe, you shrewd epicurean sous-chef to The Big Guy, you.

church, advertisement, food

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

118

Paul Zarzyski

"Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer"

Because pitching woo to my 1952 baby blue Smith-Corona Silent-Super - good ol' U.S. of A. steel and iron, truer than a shoeing anvil - is like getting mighty western on a saddle blanket in the hayloft on a cool July afternoon,

computer, confusion, lover

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

120

Paul Zarzyski

The "Have Laptop, Will Travel" Paladin-Never-Used-A-Computer Boogie-Woogie Blues

Got a laptop dallied to the apple of my saddle I'm moving stock and talking with my broker in Seattle I'm a yahooin' dot-commer Don't tell the Unabomber I'm a cyberspace roughrider I'm a rammer and a rommer.

computer, monitor, bidding

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

122

Paul Zarzyski

Rodeo Poet Horse-Manure-Forker

Not your run-of-the-mill manure, no sirree - these are creative greenbacks in the round, wads of quadruple sawbucks, hard cold October simoleons, ingots

manure, hay, wages

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

124

Paul Zarzyski

The Day My Dentist, George Olsen, Was Crowned "Hero!" To Poet Across The Whole Cowpoke Cosmos

Tilted topsy-turvy and periodontically probed for hours - launched by a laudanum-Novocain-nitrous oxide bronc called Cocktail toward the planet Amalgam - I have just begun my tipsy re-entry into atmospheric earth

dentist, pain, root canal

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

126

Paul Zarzyski

Pre-Op-Poet Blues

"NOTHING to eat or drink after midnight" puts the Yosemite Sam "WHOA!" on my morning tryst with the Muse who knows she comes second only to my first cup of joe - the caffeine fix my very Italian mother hooded me on when she laced my baby bottle with "just a little dribble," from her coffee cup

coffee, energy, inspiration

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

130

Paul Zarzyski

How The Lord Throwed-In With Mom To Make Me Quit The Broncs

'Twas as my mother sayin' rosaries day and night - beads coiled 'round each mitt- that compelled the Lord to heed her prayers, if He built this world in seven days He could dang sure make me quit.

prayers, angel, plans

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

132

Paul Zarzyski

Dear Mom

The night that devil danced on me I know how you barely peeked between fingers and beads. You heard the hard blow-by-blow announcer cawing from the crow's nest, above the cowboy holler and dust,

piano, rodeo, drunk

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

133

Paul Zarzyski

Benny Reynolds' Bareback Riggin'

A bacon slab a-boiled black in oil every day Ain't as soggy as the surcingle he folds whatever twisted way he wants to, heck it always has sprung back Like a flapping magic bird pulled from his riggin' sack,

bareback, rodeo, age

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

136

Paul Zarzyski

Rodeo In His Bones

He rocked-n-roweled for eons With The Cowpoke Rolling Stones, But Bronco Rock, once in his blood, Now yodels in his bones.

rock, pop culture, rodeo

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

138

Paul Zarzyski

The Roughstockaholic's "Just-One-More-Last-One" Blues

What I would pledge for one more horse? I'd drive a Rambler, scrap the Porsche. I'd swear off beef and live on borscht.

bronc, elko, debt

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

140

Paul Zarzyski

A Cowboy Reel

"Ain't a hand been hatched since 1950," you'll hear some real cowboy pontificate and pine - "just a bunch of wanna-bes, Hopalong-come-latelies," compared to him, who's born, of course, in 1949.

dance, real cowboy, horse

Steering With My Knees

Paul Zarzyski

FOLK COLL 11 Z-5

143

Paul Zarzyski

Ain't No Life After Rodeo: The Polish-Hobo-Rodeo-Poet's Commencement Address - To the Chagrin of Every Graduate's Mother - At

There ain't no life after rodeo Sulled-up old cowboys will tell you so

college, rodeo, encouragement