The clink of dishes being put away, coffee grinding, the
scuffle of hooves, some stringy piss-yellow tattered clouds.
On the
bookshelf: old wanted posters, a cravat bandage dangling brass safety pins, a few
pieces of silver, three cigarettes, and a bullet-spent Colt Peace Maker.
I am lifting
certain habits from legendary
drunks,
gilded
scraps of bouts I’m too scared to fight
with or against;
hove like this tackling coffee grounds into the straw;
spurred
to dull; lazy under the wandering drone of flies.
My ceiling is a whore’s floor.
Shit stews in all the crocks while I’m lassoed along by branded moods,
flunked into this,
coughing up raspy laughs that never quite get rolling.
Fuzz-dust clings to a
woebegone Stetson,
a shine-less tin star in the sapphire light,
a train ticket back to Valdosta
just out of reach.
just out of reach.
Joy exits out the front door’s mail slot.
My fleeing’s all done--
tails never to be tucked again,
guns all smoked out,
paint-smeared mirrors, and dirty socks bundled in a corner.
Bash in my
mush-mulled head to the squealing of horses,
and the heaving thrash of disorderly wagons,
and the crammed
thudding of a thousand passenger pigeons flapping by,
shit-soaking the land and blacking out the sky.
It takes
a lot to keep taking a look back:
Big Nose Kate and a dentist’s drill,
Johnny Ringo, Leadville and a drop of laudanum,
The Bella Union, Dodge City, Tombstone and the Earps.
It’s all a sham in the gone-by wind.
Bravery’s lost its charm,
and my draw’s gotten slower than
waiting for water to boil.
Chipped and
marred, my best days
married to a bottle and a holstered dream.
Chumps like me tackle their own shadow in broad daylight
sappy enough still
to still think they’ve got a few bullets left
in the
rusted-shut chamber of their waning days;
pining for that warm, tufted, bristling smack of home;
lying in bed barefoot,
lying in bed barefoot,
dying for their boots back,
just like me
saying, “damn, this is funny,” to nobody but the cold, cold wind.
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