The Whistling Vicuna

Some of my Poems

Baby’s gone to get some water

 Baby’s gone to get some water. Left the house a day or two ago. I don’t think the water hole’s that far away. But I don’t get the water, so I don’t know.

‘Times it seems she’s thirsty a lot. A powerful thirst for a one so small. I seem to have lost my thirst a long time ago. Just never seem to hear the call.

Takes a lot of water for ‘em all. Dirty walls, dirty floors, dirty dishes. I can’t remember the last time I got my hands wet. Something else I keep in my wishes.

Did you ever wake up, late in the morning with the sun on the wrong wall. You wake up to a quiet, no coffee on, no window curtains moving in a breeze. You seem to hear your dog laying on the porch, but it might just be in your head. That’s what it’s like when baby’s gone to get some water.

Baby’s gone to get some water. She left, um, some time ago. I never really understood the need for water. I guess it’s just something I’ll never know.

 

I taken up me skald

I wrappen round me me wadmal coat yn taken up me skald

  I shaken out a farful yull yn skerrit the dem dogs bald

Yestreen me bonnie taken her shrouds yn civvered her colden breast

  Ez I a mummer graver played her gyven shade hied west

O could I finden hoar Ymir’s lair and hacken out great meat cantles

   I taken the morbid gobbets few yn fashen newbairn mantle

But ere I finden brillig fled too soon is hyden gnomen

  Shadowfall has taken all yn hid all in the gloamen

So longere me weird ez robben yn worts me graven rules ken

  I shuck this height yn shreik this peen uplong the beggars welkin   

 

 

Poor Brother John

Poor brother John,

Too bad he’s dead and gone,

He stepped into the path of a train.

His legs was left in town,

His arms on country ground,

We knew him by the tattoo of his name.

Chorus

Brother John, Brother John,

He never liked the whistle of the iron horse of the rail.

Brother John, Brother John,

He never had a family so it’s me that tells the tale

 

Poor brother John,

Was only twenty-one,

His prospects they were settled bright and fair.

A’clerking in the store,

He was wanting nary more,

The customers they thought him very rare

Chorus

Poor brother John,

Went stepping right along,

Singing of that gal “Skip to My Lou”.

His life was grand it seemed

Until he stepped between,

The steel rails of the old “K.C. Mizzoo”.

Chorus

Poor brother John,

Had one thing with him wrong,

The train whistle was pounding in his ears.

As he stepped on to the track,

Poor brother John looked back,

And didn’t see the twisted wire there.

Chorus

Poor brother John,

He tried and tried to run

But the twisted wire had grabbed and held him tight

Like Lot’s wife he looked back

At that train upon the track,

It scared him plum into next Saturday night.

Chorus

Poor brother John,

Had never done no wrong,

It saddens all the townsfolk that he’s dead

But old John he’s a pip,

He really took a trip,

See, he’s not gone, he’s just a week ahead.

 

 

Elsie’s Hootenanny Tune (Elsie Alice Aldridge)

   Born in the country nigh eighty years ago

On a Arkansas farm where the ticks and chiggers grow

Elsie Alice Aldridge was the apple of the eye

Of her mammy and her pappy and the folks that wandered by

          Chorus

Elsie Alice Aldridge pumping water at the well

Had a mockingbird sitting by her side

Boys would come a’courting Elsie Alice at the well

Elsie come a’running and the mockingbird would fly

   In the great depression they would travel on the road

Picking green tomatoes hauling cotton by the load

Eating kechup sandwiches in the shade along the way

Then she learned to eat tortillas one fine Arizona day

   In the rocky hills of Arkie where you hear the whippoorwill

Elsia Alice Aldridge had a whiskey making still

Barb, her partner, kept a loaded shotgun near

When the revenuer’s’d come along she’d shoot’em full of fear

   At the spring and fall revival Elsie Alice tends the pump

Of the music organ while a black man dances on a stump

Preacher didn’t like it but he looked the other way

Then he started dancing backwards and still does it to this day

   In her eighty years Miss Elsie’s seen a lot and that’s enough

So she and Barb sit on the porch, two widows dipping snuff

She likes to eat her ice cream when she’s in a pick-up truck

When all is said and done she lays it down to God and luck

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