Robert W. Service, Yukon Gold

I know, I know. His critics say his stuff is not poetry.  They call it doggerel and even Robert W. Service himself said he wrote verse, not poetry. So, whatever you call it, its lowbrow.  And I love it. So it rhymes.  So what?  From The Cremation of Sam McGee:  "...He turns to me and Cap, says he, I'll cash in this trip I guess and if I do, I'm asking you won't refuse my last request. Well, he seemed so low I couldn't say no, then he says with sort of  moan: yet 'taint being dead -- it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains..."

That's from memory...a few words may be wrong.  Anyway, I consider Service to be someone I envy for his talent in making his own kind of music, critics be damned.  So I let RWS's spirit guide my fingers on the keys when I write lowbrow stuff.  Like this unfinished country western song (Netarts is a small community west of Tillamook, Oregon).

My sweetheart's in Netarts and I'm in the slam,

I shouldna done what I did.

With smokin' and drinkin' and now here I am

From actin' like some half-ass kid.

(to be continued)

Once I complete the libretto I will have to find somebody to compose the music or maybe find something in the public domain so no royalty issues would be involved.  I considered the Star Spangled Banner but it just didn't feel right.  So that goes into the ToDo bucket.

My Russellville home is celebrating April's poetry month and has invited contributions from the inmates. Here is my submission:

Save the Rose Garden

We've lived year by year with terrible fear

Of bombs raining down from the sky

But now the real fear, it seems to appear

Is breath from that next to us guy.

We slink to our rooms and stare at the walls

The TV feeds unending gloom

Loop after loop, walking the halls

So it seems our future is doom.

Our years we are told, suggest we are old

In truth that is hard to deny

But hear what we say before we go cold

We're still here, we're not dead, watch us fly.

Hey, some of Shakespeare's early stuff wasn't all that grand either.  Of course, he was only three.