SIX SIXES
by Scot Young
sixsentences.blogspot.com
2
CONTENTS The Color of Blues …… 5 Next Saturday Night …… 6 The Mist of the Mountains …… 7 Brautigan at Bolinas …… 8 Bottom of the Ninth …… 9 Last Chance Blues …… 10 About the Author …… 11
3
sixsentences.blogspot.com
sixsentences.blogspot.com
4
The Color of Blues
We drive windows down, in this summer steam to the end of a two-mile dirt road sitting on the edge of a cotton field. In the rusty roof juke joint, Colt 45s are iced in metal tubs, catfish rolled in cornmeal, cooked in lard. Dirty dancing bows worn cypress floors cuts the blue haze in this one-time sharecropper's shack. The night rings of bottlenecks sliding over wailing strings, the monochords of a diddley-bow moans of eddie-one-string-jones. It is black water blues that echo out to bloody hands, of old field hollers that answer in this delta night. It is too many come before me painted the color of blues.
5
sixsentences.blogspot.com
Next Saturday Night
We will make eye contact through the smoke sometime between Mamma Tried and I Walk the Line. Something about the short shorts, Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy t-shirt‌ and boots that will make you stand out. It will take awhile and a few more drinks, maybe a few more shots, but you will ask me to dance and at last call we will leave doing the Laverne and Shirley dance down the sidewalk and end up at your place. Without a bunch of small talk but with another shot of tequila we will have some hot shooting out the lights sex and pass out. I will wake up in the morning, head pounding, see the sheet twisted around your long leg, briefly study the curve in your back, and find my pants before I need to recall your name. I will leave boots in hand and wonder if this is all there is.
sixsentences.blogspot.com
6
The Mist of the Mountains
Who will teach the children of Adam lost in mountain grass the old ways? Who will hold them in folk tale memories and grandma's quilts and read them Whitman when they are young? You once danced a dream in blue mist mornings wrapped yourself in wild white indigo. Today, I walk alone the red dirt roads, the dogwood paths, and scattered glades that point to your porch. Tonight, cicadas will sing and the hickory smoke will spread out layering the holler below the Appalachian stars shooting across a blackberry sky. Once more whippoorwills will cry your name and no one will answer.
7
sixsentences.blogspot.com
Brautigan at Bolinas
He watched the waves smooth the shore erasing any trace of just minutes before. He stepped over the broken shells on the wet sand, left deep prints behind him, and made a long looping cast into the bay thinking of her. This time something grabbed the line and began pulling it out to sea. It felt like a trout pulling the line tight right before the snap, but he knew it wasn't. He reeled in the broken line and looked back toward town. The gun shifted slightly in his jacket as he took a long gulp of whiskey from his flask and headed to the house.
sixsentences.blogspot.com
8
Bottom of the Ninth
We grew up playing until dark under mom's voice: be home before the streetlights come on. Summer days were mowing vacant lots, marking the bases with scrapes of wood or cardboard as we were outside kids wanting to be Mantle knocking it out of the park or Drysdale striking out the side in the last game of the World Series. We grew up with butch wax flat tops, gap tooth smiles, blue jeans rolled up ready to grow into, and dirty knees from catching crawdads from the creek with bacon and string. Sometimes, making both love and war we went looking for that American dream. We did our own thing, our own way and found that nothing remains the same and there is no yellow brick road. We shed some blood along the way and in that blood found the real dream was not a white picket fence, 2.5 children, or a Cadillac in every pot, but the love of a good woman holding us tight and waiting for us, one day, to wake up. 9
sixsentences.blogspot.com
Last Chance Blues
It is the blues of bent note melodies that cry through tear gas of civil rights and civil wrongs. It is the blues of crossing a blood stained bridge from Selma to Montgomery. It is the blues of one more chance, the blues of truth, the ringing blues of I have a dream sang over the reflecting pool. It is the wind blowing blues from a balcony in Memphis. It is the blues of yesterday we all sing alone. It is the blues we all sing together.
sixsentences.blogspot.com
10
About the Author
Scot Young polishes wet rings on old bars and often has trouble with whole numbers.
11
sixsentences.blogspot.com