BE.aGaIN contains two poems, number 28 and 29, that are distinctly “Western”.
Why?.I don’t know really! but I wanted to treat the full collection like a grand old Cinema that showed matinees, shorts, double bills, trailers and main features.
“Population 627” is the first of the two Western outings from reality.(“The Cattleman” is tomorrow’s offering-you can read ahead and the entire collection itself, starting at just $£€ 0.99, Here! .)
How order was brought to “chaos” and how humankind made homes and entire civilisations was always intriguing to me.Some would say we are explorers, others that we are a virus destroying the planet and indigenous species and peoples-but the truth is that the world would look very different today were it not for curiosity, greed or the search for something other even if it shined from a pan in the silt of a river bed. And so the “Wild West” was always going to be a subject to cover.
In creating this work, I had to get familiar with it’s terminology-“Military road”,”Deadline”,”Land Run”.The vernacular of a vocabulary build on threat, haste and chance.
Many Old West towns were in fact like Potemkin villages with false facades to lure those in need of rest and entertainment- “But everything’s a front and burns down,Son”. Ironically they were like the mid 20th century movie sets created to glorify these places and people.
You had extreme violence and threat to life even in the most mundane of activities-“The barber’s blade” , and wherever people settled, organised religion would also soon follow -“Preacher wants to raise the barn in just one day”.The God of the Old West it seems was an impatient one, keen on growing his customer base quickly and profitably.
There is also the sense that there was only “Good Men” and “Bad men” ,only “Dead” or “alive” and either “Dust” or “Mud”. Like the sheriff and the outlaw in the movies, the whole scenario was very black and white.
Tomorrow’s Behind the lines,-“The Cattleman”-, takes us out from this town and onto the grazing trail.
Algo.
Algo Poetry-Behind the Lines 