Cowboys In the Badlands

Cowboys in the Badlands The horses need be reined tightly lest they show better judgment and head back to the barn. The cowboys, driven by the dust cloud of following hoof beats, were less smart. A Gila monster smirks as they pass knowing what waits ahead is to be more painful than the rope they flee. Driven by the torments of a lost war, a lost home, a lost dream, they had lashed out at the hunger, fled the hovels of a shanty town and swore to exact payment any way possible. The consequences of the decision pursued them, consumed them, as they rested the horses. The horses must rest, they never would. They stood overlooking the badlands, shimmering heat’s forever fallacy, that somehow you would cross to safety, find an oasis, escape. Oh, you may escape the posse, maybe even the past, but you will not escape the bitterness of these bad lands and their unforgiving demands. Few have come here willingly, fewer have remained once tested by the dryness, the drought, the wind, sand, and anger of a land seeking to be left alone. And so they rode into the abyss of sand and stone leaving only the hoof prints of fading memory. Bandanas covered their faces, hat brims covered their eyes. They rode until the horses fell, unable to continue. Horseless, they staggered in the shifting sands laughing as they recalled staggering from the saloon on that awful night. The night they gave up, the night they gave in to the desperate desire to be free. A desire that was now to be fulfilled in these Bad Lands. For Isaiah Zerbst – Cowboys in the Badlands poetry contest 9/15/2014