[Four Poems] by Brian Townsley

by Brian Townsley

Black & White Blues_

The film was in black & white

& grey, they always forget the

grey, despite its domination,

and the camera panned away

from the bodies, shot through

and husked of any nationalism

or bravery now & anyways

it slung to the warehouse rooftop

& there a murder of ravens, from

the distance of the camera

the oily sheen still shone

like shoe polish used as blackface, like

death given gloss. & as the last

gunshot echoed

like every gunshot ever loosed

the ravens in turn rose damned

& splintered, then collected

like a uniform semblance of

those things untaught & the camera

eyed the flock

as it spun and dangled beneath

the white sky. It was simplicity

split open and seeded.

The war & the dead below

were forgotten, this dance

in negative, this celebration

amid the bones of gravity.

guess I’ll hang my teardrops out to dry_

(a Sonny Haynes joint)

The sheets billowed in the wind

hanging from one of the clotheslines

in back, the once eventual now

unnecessary. Those lessons

indecipherable in the account

of things, the necessaries in dying.

I wipe my soaked hand across the cotton, the

heavy crimson making chaos of the floral pattern.

They deserved worse,

like we all do.

The tires from the Merc kick loose earthbound

spires of gravel in the driveway as

I drive the sinking sun down.

The red postbox door hangs

open & outraged

like the first broken jaw.

Vegas, Baby

Plan B

had gone according

to plan, the burning

& the cash in the trunk. The cabin

would still be aflame, orange embers

tossed into the stinking night

of darkness & gamble.

The smoke from my smoke

curled like a tail

out the window & into the

Nevada dark. The Four Roses bottle

lay on the vinyl seat beside me,

some icon of failure. I said

to nobody at all: The wagon

is the lowest turn

of the wheel, when a man

sees the truth and a lie is

needed. Amen to that,

the bourbon

answered. And again.

Even God’s asshole gets reception

thus

the Gerald Wilson Orchestra played

Cruisin With Cab

& the open windows bared themselves

in an attempt to offer

the desert something,

anything at all,

besides sand. The .38

sat beside the bottle

like a still life.

Another hundred miles to Vegas &

the black past followed.

The Mobil station was lit as stars

frozen in place. The Pegasus stalled

in departure on the sign as

I pulled up to the pump. The clerk

was listening to Bing on the wireless

& stood when I approached.

How much, Buddy, he asked &

stared at the sparrow inked

on my neck. I unhinged my

snapcap & slicked back the hair

underneath. I believe I’ll burn

5 bucks, Chief, I said. Is that a sparrow

or a swallow? He asked.

Beg pardon. Me.

I mean, I hear they look alike, &

I was wonderin. Him.

It’s the wailing sparrow of blue ruin—he’s

the one who kills people, not

me.

I smiled at him & he saw something

there enough to stop asking questions.

5 bucks it is, pal. Him.

I walked out

of the shop & there

the weeping of the planet

bent on scabrous knees in

the dust. Nothing

for that.

I pumped my gas & then took

a piss on the mercycracked platelets

behind the shop. Midstream

I heard the siren some mile

or two off in the flat soundstage

of hardpack. My first thought was the .38

in the passenger seat

of the Merc.

I walked back to my ride like

I’m not wanted for

multiple murders or the 95 grand in

cash in the trunk. That is not

easy. You should try it.

I lit a cigarette & reached for the

bottle, slugged a draught of the bourbon.

They were coming from Vegas.

That was okay.

One way was better than two.

I sat & smoked & considered the possibility of

dying in a gas station

in Nevada & again reflected on

where the good times had gone.

Instead, I dropped the car into gear

in expectation &

curled my fingers about the rod. They arrived

like an American Parade, red & blue lights flashing

like a neon flag, tires skidding

across the dirt. They took their positions

behind their open doors

and one guy started shouting instructions

into the bullhorn loud

enough to make the deaf wince,

COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP! THERE IS NO NEED

FOR BLOODSHED HERE! COOPERATE & NOBODY

GETS HURT.

The clerk came out of the front door of the shop

with his hands grasped behind

his head. I knew that punk looked

shady.

I mean, what kind of question was that?

I revved the beast beneath me

& rolled it towards Vegas.

I aint waitin on nothin, I just got nowhere to go_

{verse1}

laments the bluesman, casting light upon

the futility of philosophy amid the infinite

alphabet of expectation. As if action itself

a necessary damnation. Outside, the clouds

have joined the march south, darkening

in their gathering, colored an ashlike gray

not unlike the shading in the black and white

photograph on the album cover.

Like all things vintage—Levi’s, hardbacks,

still life, memory—the fade is antiqued with

scar tissue and carries in it the thing that confounds

internet searches, a rainfall lost to somewhere else.

{verse2}

Amazing what basic chords can accomplish, what

perfect simplicity leaves raw. September now,

and we have begun to feel the pull of undertow

as winter and its reconnaissance brings forth

something like nostalgia. Months away yet

nevertheless brittle icebones snap beneath my

bootsteps in an imaginary convergence of yesterday and

tomorrow. The man on the album cover cradles

the guitar on his knee like a child, some conduit

of grace neither of us has any understanding of,

yet here we are, lost in the 12-bar blues, everything

faded with ecstatic sorrow in the shot twilight.

{bridge}

I aint waiting on nothing, I just got nowhere to go

is the refrain, a reminder from the Mississippi Delta

of our rootlessness. The gains and losses of retrospection

hopping about riotous like a blackbird in the snow.

{verse3}

The blues has always reminded me of life in the

necessary repetition, regardless of importance. We

do things again and again, some worth repeating,

and then the song changes suddenly with a guitar

solo, something too individual to confine in syllable

before falling again into repetition. And so it goes,

songs and lives, played out among the 12-bars amid

the brass knuckles of solitude and the fragility

of family, the coming winter and her cold

promise. The trick for any boy with a lost

halo is to simply see the song through, so the

chords themselves echo into the church of the wild.

Brian Townsley is an award-winning writer, as well as the Executive Editor for Starlite Pulp. He is the author of the crime fiction books A Trunk Full of Zeroes and Outlaw Ballads, as well as three books of poetry. His short fiction has appeared in various publications, including Mystery Tribune, Black Mask, Quarterly West, Frontier Tales, Connecticut Review, and many others, and had a story make the distinguished list in Best American Mystery Stories, 2019. He is a graduate of the Professional Writing Program at USC and is also an alum of the mighty California Golden Bears. His next Sonny Haynes novel, Under A Black Flag, will be published in spring of 2026 by Starlite Pulp.