ONE MORE POEM ABOUT BILLY THE KID

Nobody's got him quite right:
Billy, the boy with the many names:
Antrim, McCarty, Bonney, and the Kid
from Silver City, the small town boy
with the Minolta camera look:
the film saturated with silver.

He is a smiling, underdeveloped child
gone to war in yellow backed novels
from the House of Beadle and Adams.

Out of no house, but the great
adobe house of the Lord, Who raised
His boy in New York, Indiana, or Kansas
(depending on the source),
and then laid down
His boy for all time in Lincoln County
--if one legend is true.

Out of the stone grim angel alkali stone
of the house of those who gunned him over
on Maxwell's dark porch.

Out of Pat Garrett's starry life forever,
but into his heart
where it tumbled over with him,
gunned into the road one beautiful calm evening.

The pewter saliva of bullets becomes
churlish, finally, like Billy
on all his bad days with stinking women in flybottle rooms.

Amnesty is only a word with no depth
to its shine: it's a lying gray ribbon
between a birthday and the very last day.

We create our own celebrations out of the raw material
in Lincoln County. No matter if the face we celebrate
has no features. We blame that on shadows, saying,
"See how beautiful!" And the birthday candles
flicker out before our next breath.



Copyright © Estate of Ramona Weeks, 1999, 2009.  All Rights Reserved.