Dead Heat

Dead Heat Ciaron Davies (taken from the Cuirt Journal, published 2006) I. Old cowboy boots crumple down gravel Long since dead with the red hot sun Rusty Billy has got a gun You can see it smoking As he empties round after round Into the hide of his favourite horse II. All the old women come and go The young kids too Have found a wounded scorpion And are doing just like Daddy told them 'Strike out first and don't even think Blink an eyelid and you just got dead' III. Here come those old cowboy boots again You can hear silver spurs echo in the wind And you can hear cold footsteps carry through the Dead Valley A final gunshot rings through his old man's ears and twists his mind He'd wipe away blood but its gone cold and sticky just like bad honey In his head he can hear his long gone woman telling him what to do The Sheriff too is crawling out of the woodwork with a warrant in his hand The angry lynch mob have got a rope and the Scorpion kids are out for blood IV. Delirium comes and our horseless hero finds himself swinging The doors to the Last Chance Saloon violently open as he climbs inside He screams to bartender Jake for service and punches the windows out With a brick wrapped up in a broken plate of glass he got off a junky painter And as he beats the horror into submission with a torn bottle of Bourbon He can hear all the children and woman and lawmen laughing at him from Beyond that place where every moment of the past mirrors the future And all of yesterday's broken promises become tomorrow's newest mistakes They roll with the dice and the blood drenched bottle fills shot after shot Of thimble hope that takes us one step closer to the one way show down V. Staggering out of the Last Chance Saloon with a gut-full of rot and a mind-full of hate Rusty Billy felt the insanely hot sun beat down on his rubber-like and unshaven anaemic face Covering his warn old eyes with his nicotine stained hands the horse shooting old timer tried to block out the sun VI. It was the last mistake he ever made Hiding behind the sun was a ghost of the past From a killing long since done And an injury long since festered Revenge they say is a dish best served cold Its worse then that Its a goddamn disease That won't ever stop Until the frontier has built walls of bodies Piled for miles and miles As far as the Scorpion kids eyes can see Its deathly testimony of yesterday's bullet In tomorrow's gun rip. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ciaron Davies is a Galway-based, poet, playwright and musician and is currently recording an album, Too sick too sing, which is due for release in March 2006.