He was mad with lust,
but for no woman,
nor man.
His icy eyes were orbs forged in the frozen center of the world,
and as blue as the never-ending sky that vanished above,
old lines criss-crossed his face like an ill-drawn map of a distant country,
The knuckles on his leathery fingers were swollen with a lifetime of senseless toil,
bulbous and ugly things his hands were always meant for killing.
His father’s guns laid at rest low on his hips,
ancient things of forged metal and worn wood,
.45 caliber bloodstained hounds from hell,
smooth and slick from the line of men who bore the cursed tools before him,
their sleeping silence was a threat to mankind’s existence.
She inched closer,
her own soil-grey eyes invisible as dark slits beneath her brow,
shadowed from the sun by the disfigured brim of her dusty Chicano’s fedora,
She wore her mother’s brown skin,
Her mother’s bruised lips,
and no man had ever touched them.
On her hip her dead brother’s slender nickel pistol waited,
its twin sat in a higher holster that ran over one shoulder and between her exposed tits,
heavy with erect nipples the color of dried blood.
Behind her stood the Santiago Sisters,
black haired things with black hearts,
They mixed whiskey and shotgun shells and slept with every man in their path.
Four sets of boots on a lonely street of caked mud and empty store fronts,
sun-dried statues of ragged flesh and bones,
loveless creatures,
wanderers of the high desert,
as solitary a place as their ever was.
Ain’t nowhere to turn,
she said.
Ain’t no one turnin’,
he said.
The sisters wild-eyed and grinning madly,
the Devil somewhere with his feet propped up,
his work done,
Only love can tear them apart.
In the shifting heat he waited calmly for her fingers,
long, thin, boneless things that twitched over the ivory handle of her gun,
He was patient as a dead man and would wait forever.
So they stood in their final moments,
unconnected to the spin of the world,
no cloud in the sky.
She moved with fire,
like the flight of a thousand crows,
muscles and tendons in recoil,
in practiced animation that had ended the lives of many men before.
The Gunslinger did not breathe,
a wind came and his hand was lightning,
the sun became blood,
when the lone bullet opened her chest a once cold heart poured forth the warm river of her life,
she fell to her knees,
her ill-fated guns untouched,
to join the dust of the street,
He was unfinished,
behind her fell the partners – the Santiago Sisters,
Their trigger fingers too slow to dispatch the street sweepers held ready in their corrupt hands.
Three bodies whose ghosts intertwined in the air with the black powder smoke sifting from the now quiet barrel of his gun,
Three ghosts already forgotten,
a vapor and a memory,
a man forged of ice and stone.
The Gunslinger lifted a threadbare oxhide boot to let a rivulet of black blood trickle past his feet,
to disappear or be boiled in the heat of the day,
an ink stain on the thoroughfare,
He shifted his feet and moved on,
For the love of no one,
He served his father’s guns well.
10.09
but for no woman,
nor man.
His icy eyes were orbs forged in the frozen center of the world,
and as blue as the never-ending sky that vanished above,
old lines criss-crossed his face like an ill-drawn map of a distant country,
The knuckles on his leathery fingers were swollen with a lifetime of senseless toil,
bulbous and ugly things his hands were always meant for killing.
His father’s guns laid at rest low on his hips,
ancient things of forged metal and worn wood,
.45 caliber bloodstained hounds from hell,
smooth and slick from the line of men who bore the cursed tools before him,
their sleeping silence was a threat to mankind’s existence.
She inched closer,
her own soil-grey eyes invisible as dark slits beneath her brow,
shadowed from the sun by the disfigured brim of her dusty Chicano’s fedora,
She wore her mother’s brown skin,
Her mother’s bruised lips,
and no man had ever touched them.
On her hip her dead brother’s slender nickel pistol waited,
its twin sat in a higher holster that ran over one shoulder and between her exposed tits,
heavy with erect nipples the color of dried blood.
Behind her stood the Santiago Sisters,
black haired things with black hearts,
They mixed whiskey and shotgun shells and slept with every man in their path.
Four sets of boots on a lonely street of caked mud and empty store fronts,
sun-dried statues of ragged flesh and bones,
loveless creatures,
wanderers of the high desert,
as solitary a place as their ever was.
Ain’t nowhere to turn,
she said.
Ain’t no one turnin’,
he said.
The sisters wild-eyed and grinning madly,
the Devil somewhere with his feet propped up,
his work done,
Only love can tear them apart.
In the shifting heat he waited calmly for her fingers,
long, thin, boneless things that twitched over the ivory handle of her gun,
He was patient as a dead man and would wait forever.
So they stood in their final moments,
unconnected to the spin of the world,
no cloud in the sky.
She moved with fire,
like the flight of a thousand crows,
muscles and tendons in recoil,
in practiced animation that had ended the lives of many men before.
The Gunslinger did not breathe,
a wind came and his hand was lightning,
the sun became blood,
when the lone bullet opened her chest a once cold heart poured forth the warm river of her life,
she fell to her knees,
her ill-fated guns untouched,
to join the dust of the street,
He was unfinished,
behind her fell the partners – the Santiago Sisters,
Their trigger fingers too slow to dispatch the street sweepers held ready in their corrupt hands.
Three bodies whose ghosts intertwined in the air with the black powder smoke sifting from the now quiet barrel of his gun,
Three ghosts already forgotten,
a vapor and a memory,
a man forged of ice and stone.
The Gunslinger lifted a threadbare oxhide boot to let a rivulet of black blood trickle past his feet,
to disappear or be boiled in the heat of the day,
an ink stain on the thoroughfare,
He shifted his feet and moved on,
For the love of no one,
He served his father’s guns well.
10.09
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