The Collected Works of Billy the Kid Read Online Free PDF

fresh passages of air ricocheted pain across his face every time he breathed. The left side of his face looked as though it had melted by getting close to fire. So he chewed red dirt constantly, his pockets were full of it. But his mind was still sharp, thepain took all the drug. The rest of him was flawless, perfect. He was better than me with rifles. His feet danced with energy. On a horse he did tricks all the time, somersaulting, lying back. He was riddled with energy. He walked, both arms crooked over a rifle at the elbows. Legs always swinging extra.

MISS SALLIE CHISUM: ON BILLY
    I was sitting in the living room

when word was brought he had arrived.

I felt in a panic. I pictured him

in all the evil ugliness

of a bloodthirsty ogre.

I half expected he would slit my throat

if he didnt like my looks.
    I heard John saying with a wave of his hand,

Sallie, this is my friend, Billy the Kid.

A good looking, clear-eyed boy stood there

with his hat in his hand, smiling at me.

I stretched out my hand automatically to him,

and he grasped it in a hand as small as my own

*
    Crouching in the 5 minute dark
can smell him smell that mule sweat
that stink need a shotgun
for a searchlight to his corner
    Garrett? I aint love-worn
torn aint blue I’m waiting
smelling you across the room
to kill you Garrett going
to take you from the knee up
leave me   my dark    AMATEUR!

*
    A motive? some reasoning we can give to explain all this violence. Was there a source for all this? yup—
    “Hill leaped from his horse and, sticking a rifle to the back of Tunstall’s head blew out his brains. Half drunk with whisky and mad with the taste of blood, the savages turned the murder of the defenceless man into an orgy. Pantillon Gallegos, a Bonito Cañon Mexican, hammered in his head with a jagged rock. They killed Tunstall’s horse, stretched Tunstall’s body beside the dead animal, face to the sky, arms folded across his breast, feet together. Under the man’s head they placed his hat and under the horse’s head his coat carefully folded by way of pillows. So murdered man and dead horse suggested they had crawled into bed and gone to sleep together. This was their devil’s mockery, their joke—ghastly, meaningless. Then they rode back to Lincoln, roaring drunken songs along the way.
    “Lucky for Billy the Kid and Brewer that they had gone hunting wild turkeys, else they would have shared Tunstall’s fate. From a distant hillside they witnessed the murder.”

*
    To be near flowers in the rain
all that pollen stink buds
bloated split
leaves their juices
bursting the white drop of
spend out into the air at
you the smell of things dying
flamboyant smell stuffing up your
nose and up like wet cotton in the brain
can hardly breathe nothing
nothing thick sugar death

*
    In Mexico the flowers
like brain the blood drained
out packed with all the liquor perfume
sweat like lilac urine smell
getting to me from across a room
    if you cut the stalk
your face near it
you feel the puff of air escape
the flower gets small smells sane
deteriorates in a hand

*
    When Charlie Bowdre married Manuela, we carried them on our shoulders, us on horses. Took them to the Shea Hotel, 8 rooms. Jack Shea at the desk said Charlie—everythings on the house, we’ll give you the Bridal. No no, says Charlie, dont bother, I’ll hang onto her ears until I get used to it.
    HAWHAWHAW

*
    White walls neon on the eye
1880    November 23    my birthday
    catching flies with my left hand
bringing the fist to my ear
hearing the scream grey buzz
as their legs cramp their
heads with no air
so eyes split and release
    open fingers
the air and sun hit them like pollen
sun flood drying them red
catching flies
angry weather in my head, too

I remember this midnight at John Chisum’s. Sallie was telling me about Henry. They had had it imported from England by ship, then train, then Sallie had met the train and brought it the last seventy miles in a coach. Strangest