PADES

Parable as metaphor--
profile in hard glint of light,
buckskin garb
merging from shadow &
buckboards--
sandwiching of memory
being elbowed
thru a Deadwood City
saloon door.

Noneother.
Dead Man's Hand.
Cards strewn,
last tumbler ...
chamber on empty.
Yancy Derringer modelling the
latest revolver of his namesake,
in pit & the palm
bullet in the back
for Wild Bill, just for a keepsake.

Treasure-trove for the funeral parlour:
"they done him up well". Peccadillo as provocation.

WILD CARD

Clayton brothers at the corral,
its Earp City today
tumbleweed junction for numerous lives,
not to mention lies
swift-draw artists
encased in a memory of stone
boots up ...
with all the forlorn grace of
being pushed in front
of a train.

1920's FLICKER

John Dillinger and Baby-Faced Nelson
in a dream together
--one shooting holes thru
theories of his untimely death,
the other frying in an old-time
(e) Electric Chair
with balloons waving, bonbons
going off, the crowd in a joyous,
boisterous mood.

The marquee reads:
"Public Enemy Number One
laid to rest in a
shallow grave as
gravelly as the heart
that beat in his stoney chest."

An adjacent sign noted,
crime does pay the undertaker
but other, good-hearted folks
need look no further than
the Dempsey-Tunney fight
to see which has the
bigger box office draw.

CANDLELIGHT IN BLACK

The ghosts are marmalade
thin as rinds across toast
or the Weeping Willow, whose
green beard leans,
crane-like, into a child's
backyard.

A Morning Cloak butterfly,
maroon wet with the paint
of morning, cat paws
thin filament leaves
astride a larder
of memories.

Dalliance with the past,
smoke grey these architects
of memory
the privet hedge,
lone pine tree,
jet black caterpillar
poised about a green
carrot top trigger
laced in emperor's gold
like fathoms of the sea
held ... in quiet repose.

HIGHGATE

Angel Inn,
come off a sign
blown sideways
in the sugar and ices
night.

Old St. Joseph's
Cathedral, bottom
of the hill, here
Andrew Marvell
of "coy mistress"
fame sports a plaque
remembering "time's
winged chariot" and
farther (further!) up
a quaint pub gives accolades
(Kudos, too) to the fact, 1666
nefariously was the plague yea