by J.T. Marie
"If you were running,
your life on the line,
I’d be there beside you,
Bonnie to your Clyde,
and when the car slowed
the guns cocked and aimed,
I would hold your hand in mine
as we went down in flames."
"Love among outlaws and thieves" is the theme of J.T. Marie's short-but-sweet poetry e-book Gangster Love. It themes of longing, sadness and betrayal are timeless, and time shifts between the 24 poems, from the Old West to a modern urban crime scene.
Some of the poems address the complex relationship between Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett. According to legend, they were friends until Garrett was elected sheriff. Garrett then hunted down Billy and ultimately killed him. The book imagines some of the feelings that might have been behind their initial closeness and Garrett's subsequent betrayal.
Other poems imagine other kinds of fugitives, outlaws or escapees in various stages of partnership...or loneliness. It explores the hidden, human side of people whose names end up splashed across the headlines and whose bodies end up outlined in chalk.
The characters who populate these poems are pansexual. Gender seems to melt into the background - their loves are situational, not based on a strictly defined sexuality. Their longing is suggested by soft brushes of lips against lips. This is poetry of feeling, not explicit erotica. It seems to flow purely from J.T. Marie's ability to stand inside outlaw shoes and imagine.
Get Gangster Love for $1.99 (at the moment, on sale for $1.59) from JMS-Books.com
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