Three Bad Guns

a 3 minute western

Arizona sun bakes hard the dust

While three bad guns create a fuss

People hide running scared

For in this sleepy place their kind is rare

Word travels fast down the street

Three bad guns are here for me.

I pin my star, tie down cast iron

To pull their teeth and send them ride'n

Their game of fun ends in death,

I spy the sheriff lying dead,

They play for blood,

 not for jest,

 I meet their terms,

their middleman now dead

A tumble weed tumbles by,

The remaining two run to hide

They curse my name and threaten me

 I take aim, and again they lose one  from the  three.

One man left he's a fast outlaw

He claims the street 

so we can draw

With three long strides 

I match his stance

Two .44s rip from leather

but my hand  just a little faster

Now outlaws three 

all lay dead

And on more time

I must bury 

my 

past.

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

i am reminded of "the man who shot liberty valance"
but more so...
"High Noon"---
a really well done story poem...you got us there...felt really sorry for the Sheriff....three against one....not fair for the sheriff...but for this guy, not fair for them.
but then....the reputation in those days...and then all the comers trying to knock him off...prove they are better..rough.

[Cherrie Palmer]

The wild west, I cut my teeth on Zane's westerns. My grandpa had a large grocery sack full of them old books behind his chair.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

my dad loved westerns...either reading them or watching western movies....and old tv westerns...he and i watched The Lone Ranger together when the series was on in the fifties...also The Rough Riders...and others..Your grandpa and my dad could have had great conversations...

[Cherrie Palmer]

That's a fact I think of all the changes that happened in my grandpa's life. My grandpa Malone was born in 1902, my great grandpa in 1872. My granddaughter will graduate in 2027 which sounds like scifi and thats just 5 generations.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

wow, yes, scifi...
my dad was born in 1919....and what really fascinates me is that as a kid his dad took him to yankee stadium and he watched Babe Ruth play there in his prime...and Wyatt Earp died in 1929 when my dad was ten years old...
my dad's dad died when my dad was 16...i never met him...he was an orphan from sicily...and when they naturalized him...they changed his last name...he was cilberto...
as S&G sang..."time hurries on...and the leaves that are green, turn to brown..."