The Gunslinger's Story

Skeleton resting
Back against a boulder
Another cowboy that lived and died

Empty is the canteen
Slung across his shoulder
Rusted sixgun still holstered at each side

Somewhere on the blazing horizon
Galloping through the mean cactus maze
The stallion he was meant to ride
Melting out there in the haze before him

Where legendary outlaws hide

Desire remains ever present these days
In the hollowed eye sockets of his skull
Full of fiery gold daydreams
And cold silver prospects

There is a cautionary tale to be told
Spoken by the wise old soul
Dressed in traditional native attire
Who now sits in a worn out lawn chair
To the left of the corpse he propped up
And adorned with dime store spectacles

To the right
A dead scorpion
Impaled by a nail
Decorating a wooden sign staked in the dirt
Scrawled across it,
WISDOM $1.00

The Indian says as he waves around an eagle feather,

For all the dollar signs in his eyes
Gunslinger had not any sense
His vision of untold wealth
Left him too farsighted to grasp
Bugs crawling on mesa rocks
Resembling crawdads in creek
Were venomous like asp
Or any other snake rattling about the desert

And he adds while producing a shoebox
Filled with cheap magnification glasses,

Five Dollars apiece

If there is a moral to this story
I am too blind to see it