Concrete Cowboy
The cavalry came
To bend my ear
Around the cold
Cold tender. Two hearts
On the line
After a late night
Bender several years
In the making; nothing
Finer than scraps
In the damp tin
Fire lit, little key, minor
Chord tampering
With heart strings;
Biting at the champion
Fingertips finally
Parsing out the melody
From notation.
Rain beats
The drum softly while
Our stomachs carve
A crooked idol;
Everybody bears the crown
Every once in a blue
Moon, half hidden
By the breeze. The horses
Beg to be put down
Or put to use
But it is too late to ride
Out, meet whatever
May be coming. This
night will be our last
Between the desert
And the river bed
So we would do well
To remember every detail,
Every song;
Every fearful sight backlit
By the flames before we turn
To face the dawn.
BB
I sharpened the teeth
Of this burgundy beast
And taught it to obey
Tear up each black vein
Through the night stretched out
Like a canvas cloud
Or a bullet through the jaw
Bone to blow the fatal flaw
Clean away and move on
When the morning debt is gone
To glory in a fireball
Of government buildings falling
At my feet
Shredding well past midnight eating
Black grit and road salt
Spitting out debris along the fault
Lines splitting the state
Into disparate halves
Both destroyed and roared past
In an instant by my reckoning
Whilst I was well met and respected
As an agitator here on the material
Plainly stated insofar as I can tell
Elias Appleby is a musician, gardener, and poet, currently based in Midcoast Maine. To each of these pursuits, he aims to bring a cohesive and consistent voice that intentionally prioritizes beauty in all its forms. A graduate of nowhere and a student of none, his artistic foundations are made up solely of his daily lived experience, avid media consumption, and persistent obsession with the world around him.
