These days,
              if you’d seen him…

           If you could freeze a man in time
      you’d call him a cowboy.

         that’s what he looked like
                a ghost in a graveyard of mythos
        seeking asylum in the present.

But…
                                      John Wayne he wasn’t.
  Even the most brilliant of the ephemeral
              will disintegrate
when the somnolent wake from
          slothful slumber
              to find the dream to prosper
          dead and mangled

                            hanging from wires

                     dripping with joyful progress…
              each drop that falls
                                grows wings

             swarming the sky

                      blotting out the sun

         the earth
                it’s comeuppance.

Indubitably, this was his curse
          a wide brim hat
                  the shade of dying dreams
                          the ages echoed in his footsteps.