Cowboy Dreams

Stan Rogal
From:   Geometry of The Odd. Wolsak and Wynn, 1999

Too much on the mind it signals
The vagrant heart (as well)
Being an image in motion rustles up
Cattle country ripe with maverick herds:
    mustang, buffalo, the earlier ill-fated
       wild, woolly-toothed manmoth.
Who refuse to share historical guilt, rather,
Desiring to be 10' tall & bulletproof
Enter this tranquil scene
    big & bold as anything under the sun.
Wide-eyed, square-jawed, head set just so
Brutally handsome
    beneath a white stetson hat
Cigarette nailed romantically to the lower lip
A rifle slung over one broad shoulder
    & a pair of pearl-handled six-shooters
        strapped around the hips.
What sounds at the first blast
Echoes this boxed canyon to its knees
Startling the dust & putting ravens to flight.
The past effecting such dead surround
Whether 20/20 or 54/40 visions
Rock of ages rocking on
As if to target some filmic loop
    or cardboard carnival figures
        existing merely for the pleasure.
See — bodies buckle only to right themselves
    to be shot again & again & again...
Fish in a barrel, remind the oldtimers.
Easy pickings for every dreaming
Trigger-happy kid.

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Stan Rogal's works copyright © to the author.