"Old Cowboy Hat"

I get in your head
like a cocaine rose
like summer night air
I want to tell you
there are distances here
you're loved
pretty and pink
the color of newborn flesh
now
healthy

I used to love your sharp edges
heart pounding
hard from
all that vodka
soaking up
what you didn't want
something metallic
in our mouths
when we kissed
and star smoke fucked our brains out

I dwindle now
dawdle like a top
no longer spinning
the long long road
lays out
before me
like a frigid arm
tracking
blue medians
lifeless

I want to wear
your new skin
snake-shed this s**t
and flush it
my water world
spinning away
from two hearts
defused
and one 

severed spine

thrown down
discs
scattered
like pool balls
on the floor
all except the 8
rolling up
into
a broken
light bulb

Author's Note

Reviews

[Larry Dyson]

Was sitting on the floor in houston texas in the student union at Uof H in 1967 listening to Allen ginsberg read his poetry out loud and discuss the times ..way before it was cool or supported...interesting person..was like a Richie Havens who wrote instead of Singing..

[Steven]

Man, awesome. I like how you put it.

[DaniElle LaPointe]

Being your Calgarian, Canadian friend.... I couldn't resist the title. Was pleasantly surprised through and through. This is guttural. Unpretentious. Raw. I like the mention of vodka soaking up the unwanted. Interesting spin on drunkeness. Severed spine. So easily broken? Damn. Raw edged sentimental. Didn't know it could coexist so fluidly.... Well not with this level of subtle genius and sensuality.

[DaniElle LaPointe]

Shelved it. Oh yeah.... Yehaw ;)

[Steven]

Thanks Danielle ;)

[Frieda P]

Were you born a genius or was it an acquired talent? I don't usually like to 'listen' to stories, books, etc, but you move me. Brilliant.

[Steven]

I've been called worse things ;). Glad you dug it!

[Marri]

Raw tragedy and raw ecstasy at once! It gives goose-bumps ( and they never lie). I am in love with 'the broken light bulb' that finishes the circle....

[Steven]

Thanks for the read Marri. I'm a fan of the bumps too :)

[Riley Mistwood]

very interesting read

[InkSlinger]

Boy you sure write with conviction... and your writing style is very familiar...
Raw, distinct, lots of life lived within few line. Instant fav...

[Steven]

Thanks inky

[victoria]

Fro me this was a portrayal of self, finding yourelf albeit as single, your melancholy palpable in the recording, a weightiness seeps through the read of your adjustment to simply being, the other has moved on, is healthy, and despite the beautiful nostalgia you have a desire to start anew such is the shedding of skin (great line bytheway), such exquisite self limiting hopelessness too, ..... ...the road may not be as bad as your pain paints it. Totally absorbed in several reads of this, I just love it when a poem does that to you. A question if I may, the 8 ball, is that a sort of'game over'? reference

[Steven]

Thanks Victoria, I enjoy your substantive reviews :). Definitely could be taken that way, especially given the game and the ending ending in the "pokey" of the broken bulb. The 8 to me is the black sheep of the crowd, which scatters away from him as he pursues his own destruction.

[Steven]

Meant eight ending in the "pocket". Ha, damn phone!

[victoria]

I see, thank you. Pokey did give me a giggle.

[Steven]

xD

[Lily Mae]

I love every word and the journey they took me on.. I love it because it taps into that real part of us and our memories that are so raw and we push them away.. I could relate to this so much it's scary... Like always.. I bow to your greatness:) xo

[Steven]

Cheers Lily

[KAOlmsted]

Damn, son...just when I think you're just a pretty face, you go and dazzle me with your f*****g brilliance. I see a lot of the old school beatnik poets you and I are both fans of in this piece and it really makes me want to make a trip to the library and hold an old dog-eared and wrinkled copy of Howl in my trembling fingers...This sincerely pricked my flesh, Steven; I think it is one of my absolute favorites on this site. Good on ya, boy-o.

[Steven]

My ego can't handle that! S**t--see, my hat just snapped. Thank you K ;)

Yes! Kerouac, Ginsberg, love those guys. Have you checked out Steven Jesse Bernstein? Jebus he's f*****g great. Later on, but GREAT. Same idea, except a bit more surrealist.

[KAOlmsted]

An absolute pleasure...

I will check out SJB today; thanks for the recommendation, Steven.

[KAOlmsted]

Oh...wow. A million times thank you. My favorite is No No Man...listened to it six times in a row. Seriously. Thank you. (p.s. Old Cowboy Hat is better *laugh*)

[Steven]

lol, THANKS!

Yeah love that guy... Party Balloon is fun too. But one of fav lines of his in Sub-Basement of Hell, goes, "The black rubber tires of 4 am pulling their heavy truck over my skull and bones... I remember the bottle as I lay awake but am too scared to touch it... the traffic is a conveyor belt of brown candy bars. I put my mouth to the road and suck..." xD

[KAOlmsted]

Amazing. I used to be so inspired by Allen Ginsberg, but somewhere along the line I lost my sharp, clearly defined edge and meandered into the safe, padded room of fluff and stuff *sigh* I do believe I have some poetry to write ;-) Thanks again, Steven...

[Steven]

Good good :)