Old Pulp

It comes wrapped up in clear mylar, like the ones comic people use, insides faded, creased and yellow, big red letters boast of the west, small rips and tears from ancient hands, and the collectors before me, does not detract from the image: Cowboys in bold, pulsing colors, pistols blazing, horses rearing, sweet girl taking cover behind. Inside the paper, yellow-brown, brittle and has a smell to it, cheap newsprint, never meant to last, disposable, all this stuff was, but inside endless stories roll, some from greats you still recognize, others from folks long forgotten, coaxed to life when you read their words, their thoughts reborn, blended with yours as your eyes scan the old pages, our only immortality. The images scattered throughout, like comics before the comics, black lines build up a lost world, that only lived within out dreams Ads for cigarettes and liquor, columns with words from old cowboys who actually lived through the age; marketing for correspondence: How to build your own radio, How to write things down in shorthand, You can look like Charles Atlas! The TV of its time and then you finish and feel bad that you are in the present day again. Do you think they’ll read our scribblings a hundred years after the fact?