Bisbee Rain Collage

Rain collage

drip dripping ontop scattered books

unseen, invisible

buckets surrendering their rusted holes

to familiar July damp

drifting up through the floor.

Certain poets have returned underground

confounding fixed thinking,

alleycats outback fluttering their wings,

bards once sheltered ontop soapbox scaffolds

casting insignificant shadows

onto cigar ash floorboards.

Now, window barbarous downpour,

a constant waterwash up from Agua Prieta

sinks the ground deeper beneath this forsaken red pit,

where Copper Queen dragon miners hang out

selling confiscated petrified rocks

to gambling stonecutters celebrating on holiday

as if it were fiesta time

when holy monsoons seize back their garden.

Meanwhile, thirty or so miles to the north,

Bisbee Billy and his stogie lean over the dealer

scoping the guy’s picture cards

and fingering another trick bounce,

while the other clueless players cast their desperate lots

hoping to extract diamonds from iron,

turquoise from copper matrix dumps.

All the while our hipster turquoise-toothed jester

catches a sing song shuffling of doormats,

as the upstairs remaining tenants,

survivors armed with heishi trinkets

and malachite spiderweb chips,

feverishly haul out buckets of water.

And already wary of these days of red hats,

pentagrams, nooses, and sycophant doubletalk fakers

submerged in allnightcardgames,

Billy fakes a series of yawns,

folds his winning hand

ceding to the deluge outside,

wily aware it’s too late

to hop aboard a bus back to St. Elmo’s Museum,

to again take that ol familiar half turn

through the drenched saloon’s

crooked green doors.

10/2/20, Bisbee