234. there once was a day when gauchos were blameless

there once was a day when gauchos were blameless,
but long ago (was, that), alaska high plains (on) —
long nights they’d camp with their horses and cattle,
and no-one the wiser (beheading’s the back of)

the wind whistled weeping pampas (through, trees on),
whales would the sagebrush strikingly steam in,
and when GAUCHO GIL, who’d blubber with whittle,
suddenly struck out (he beheaded a fiddler)

dance, so they’d while south american skies,
but one fiddler less makes a band broken (timing),
and when GAUCHO GIL beheaded again
it was for the guy who did rhythm with sticks

the details are gory, but long before morning
the whole gaucho band was in pieces, in quarters,
in three-fifths, in eighths (this description’s not great),
they hadn’t got heads and GIL into taken

custody by POLICE, GAUCHO, CRIMES
(humanity against, decapitation, defined as)
who’d just from a festival seals had arrested
twenty-eight gauchos for similar sledges

there’s a saying that goes with murderers, stow them
in separate spaces, or together they grow (will),
and what soon with GIL and his gaucho seal killers,
they’d guards overpowered, escaped with a million

POLICE, GAUCHO, CRIMES the week before whited
a caravan cocaine gaucho lands higher,
where gauchos have not learned whale blubber bothering,
and live off of big screen TV’s and exotic

dancing girls — when POLICE, CRIMES came in
for someone’d reported beheadings beginning
of gauchos collected twelve thousand pounds lettuce
sold on the black market POLICE to inspect with

the dollars were fresh, consumable, metal
(some of them — most were in paper, but whether
you’ve got one in coin, or in plastic, or noises,
it don’t (doesn’t) matter) POLICEMEN purloined them
(cont.)