Ten Gallon Hat Dance

by KJ Hays

what so at twilight i cries a yeeha all melancholy & so
deep blue lugubrious like cuz i forgot all about my sense
once those hairy skank-roots bounced lively thru
our dude ranch turning our quiet desert rose home
to one of the thorniest, green tumbleweed factories
ever to take root in this Gust slinger’s Okay Corral;
i’d been rollin’ so fast my blisters chapped under
the sun all grinning sinister yellows on us till we
flipped bitch-like, all of us ranch hands with long
silver pistols licking tight wads of so long cowpoke
ever’ which way cuz this gaga Ms. Lala of the Huge
Hacienda tosses a rodeo sombrero into the midst O’
the SHIT: bullets clanging louder than the game of
horseshoes rattlin’ around in my head afore i’d got
so spanked on peyote i saw myself countin’ the air
ripples spinning off those wads of so long cowpoke
as Ms. Lala throws off her raiment so white she must’ve
skinned lightning & poured all the whitehot grease on
some ungodly spool cuz’ that ten gallon hat glittered
with them panties so wild with knotty filigree i ‘bout
flooded the ho’ damn garrison with jizzum while she
swang those glug a lug jugs like dos round, cheek-soft
rockpiles capped with snow made to glow a warm pink
under the late night motel sunrise creeping up o’er the
snake-neck curve o’ the valley in her glad ass a-workin’
circles in the air lasso style with all us cowboys trigger
skipping our six shooters making that raspberry liquid
squirt out in hog-snot uneasy streams into our leather
boots this serious night the firefight blasted the handle
bar mustache clean off my choppers along with a hunk
of my shoulder as Ms. Lala kept dervishing as if she were
a whorehouse fountain gushing all gifts of sick life to
me, the one hombre covered in the blood of the dead
and the still breathing, who set out to lay in the dirt
with all that good woman-ness & forget ‘bout what
the hell ever’ one thinks the goddamned mornin’ is.

cribnotes for paradise's tribunal

by KJ Hays

lay it out. lay out all of the blood.
take no wrists with your earnest savagery.
go alone.

tell about the fat girl nice enough
to hump you on the edge of a futon.
tell 'em it fell over. tell 'em
you said lean & she leaned & the
two of you didn't budge a single inch
like witnesses to a drive-by stabbing.

love the others there.
love their wound up guts out.
love them with lies from your
past. the good ones that use
words such as happy/love/please/
i/do/promise/joy/years/finally.
weep the tears not possible
when you were alive because
of numbness & coin & quiet.
weep 'em on her shoulder hard.
sob them on his shoulder hard.
cry long after they walk off.

do not take their shit about
opening up your body to play
the rows of golden harp strings.
crumple to signal your wholesale
emotional shutdown for your time
in the wheelchair, for your time
being called a callous monster,
for your time going so so cold,
for your time when no one kept
their broken trust with you for
a short while until their car &
pancakes lives came down soft &
sticky all over the conversation.

pant under the hot scrutiny of
their disgust at your not crucifying
yourself, at your not starving yourself,
at your not marrying the first thing to
fuck at you, at your not listening when
the one tender voice wanted to help you
& all you did was get mad for having to
wait for your inner ear to stop wiggling.

hold your hands to them. show 'em the
cuts from the dishes, from the weights
in the yard, from the broom handle, from
the rats you tried to keep; from the slips
with the hammer, from the fingernails that
wanted you awake way past two in the morning.
tell 'em they can take that line of yellow
wires and shove it around their necks until
their big bloated lips match the night sky.

fail, at your goal of resting, by greeting death in your bed &
you should be able to sneak by the way the promise that this
will not hurt disburdens you of the fact that pain is all the time.
lay yourself out. lay yourself down softly under the snuggle covers.