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Unbroken Horses (Free verse) by Caducus My Grandfather spat tobacco
bridling his limbs to stand.
He mixed cortisone and bourbon
raising a beaker to spoilt loaves
saying 'God rest her soul'.
I hid his shotguns that day
as he looked for bullets,
his quarry, my unbroken horse.
That day I discovered jackals
barked from his bitter tongue
"Your're just like your Mother
you Fatherless bastard"
truth matures from sour mash.
I hid in the stable with 'Donkey'
but I called him 'Beauty'
Grandfather never broke him
just Grandma,
when she died face down
on fresh linen.
I freed 'Beauty' and wept.
Watched him buck and run,
thought of Mums death
and my murderous birth
born again each October fifteenth
by grandfathers matches
and grandma's icing.
He locked the stable door
loaded his gun yelling 'Donkey'
as I watched through the wood lattice.
'Beauty' was shot in the hind leg
tried to stand three times but fell.
by the time I escaped the stable
he stood shaking in canter clouds
and walked with me till he died.
Grandfather called me a cissy
only to die on St Patricks day
face down in vomit
on his knees alone
by his broken horse.
Up the ladder:
Poems for devolution
Down the ladder:
Shattered
Votes: (green: user, blue: anonymous)
Arithmetic Mean: 7.4
Posted: September 15, 2005 1:59 AM PDT; Last modified: December 19, 2005 8:17 AM PSTWeighted score: 5.286087 Overall Rank: 3759 Comments:
Very sad, forcefuly told.
There was a time when men were hard living, gritty, stubborn SOB's and women were everyday saints. It was a different time that called for a different kind of people. Do not judge or praise them by today's standards. They did what they felt they had to do.
Yes, but this guy was an sob by any standard.
Not by the Grandmother's.
Then you have my sympathy. Still I think the grandfather in this poem is an SOB by any commonly accepted standard in any culture, except maybe the Vikings or the Mongols.
Why, because he shot a donkey while drunk and in intense grief over the loss of the only woman he'd ever love?
Looking at it that way allows some sympathy for the grandfather. I saw him as just a drunk, not particularly distressed over her death. In either case he should have considered the boy's feelings. It's kind of like trying to justify the actions of a drunk driver because he had a good reason to get drunk.
I'm not justifying him. I'm just saying most people don't have one dimensional personalities. There's been many a drunk driver who was considered a decent upstanding citizen. My grandfather was in many ways like this guy but there was also things about him you could love.
never forget the salt in life for its what gives the taste to the adventure.
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when she died face down
on fresh linen.
'Beauty' was shot in the hind leg
tried to stand three times but fell.
But all in all not enough insight or images that will stick in my mind. It reads like hopelessly melancholic list of how crap things are. "Grandma's dead, I'm a bastard, Grandpa shot my horse, Grandpa's dead"
Perhaps just focus on one of these.
very good lines and I like the narrative form you chose.