Concrete Western: Ghetto Ballads

[ilovewomenandbeer]

**Concrete Western: Ghetto Ballads**

Five-star mustangs roaring,
ghetto blasted ballads—
the hood's dominion.

Sheriff's lame,
down lawless lane—
cowboys cut crack cocaine,
white Sierra Leone stone
in Bloods’ veins.

Slingin’ that killer Piru poison,
enough to murder—
Perilous infants.

invasive Spanish Pirul.
California’s slow killin’ spur—
the sheriff’s spurs and his
wishful silver cuffs.

Concrete westerns,
sly slung young,
as you live you die—
blasted ballads of guns.

The sun serenades—
these scorched cowboys’ bloodied bodies.

Unturned graves—
no soil, heat waves,
boiled burials
in bloodied potholes rotting.

Crip vultures came itching—
pocketed ol’ brother’s cane.
blasting concrete western keepers—
all pecked at what they'd ever have.

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Nice edits, It starts a lot better now. 

A point about em dashes. From my understanding an em dash replaces parentheses. So for instance in this passage the em dash would mean that it reads as 

Five-star mustangs roaring,
ghetto blasted ballads
(the hood's dominion.)

which kind of works for such a passage. However in another passage it would read as 

The sun serenades
(these scorched cowboys’ bloodied bodies.)

which doesn't work.

Is this your intention for how you want the em dash to be used. Perhaps someone may correct me but I think the right use of the em dash is fairly strict.

Also another point for this passage

Slingin’ that killer Piru poison,
enough to murder—
Perilous infants.

I'm struggling to make sense of this. At first read I thought you meant 'infants in peril' because 'perilous infants' would mean infants that are dangerous. The capitalisation seems to cloud it even further for me.

Good to see you revising your poem

Thanks for the feedback—I appreciate you taking the time to read it closely.

With the em dashes, I wasn’t strictly using them as parentheses. I was mostly using them to create a pause or a sharp shift in the line, almost like a cinematic cut in the image. In some places they do work like parentheses, but in others they’re meant to interrupt the rhythm rather than contain a side thought.

For example, in the “sun serenades” line, the dash is meant to briefly suspend the image before revealing what the sun is actually serenading. So it’s more of a dramatic pause than a parenthetical aside.

For “Perilous infants,” I see what you mean about the ambiguity. I was trying to suggest innocence placed in peril by the environment (drug violence, poisoned neighborhoods), but I compressed the phrase a bit too much there. Your reading helped me notice that it might come across as the infants themselves being dangerous or in danger, which wasn’t the intention however a great interpretation.

So that’s something I may adjust in the next revision. Thanks again for pointing it out—this kind of feedback really helps when tightening the language.