Ten Gallon Hat Dance

by KJ Hays

what so at twilight i cries a yeeha all melancholy & so
deep blue lugubrious like cuz i forgot all about my sense
once those hairy skank-roots bounced lively thru
our dude ranch turning our quiet desert rose home
to one of the thorniest, green tumbleweed factories
ever to take root in this Gust slinger’s Okay Corral;
i’d been rollin’ so fast my blisters chapped under
the sun all grinning sinister yellows on us till we
flipped bitch-like, all of us ranch hands with long
silver pistols licking tight wads of so long cowpoke
ever’ which way cuz this gaga Ms. Lala of the Huge
Hacienda tosses a rodeo sombrero into the midst O’
the SHIT: bullets clanging louder than the game of
horseshoes rattlin’ around in my head afore i’d got
so spanked on peyote i saw myself countin’ the air
ripples spinning off those wads of so long cowpoke
as Ms. Lala throws off her raiment so white she must’ve
skinned lightning & poured all the whitehot grease on
some ungodly spool cuz’ that ten gallon hat glittered
with them panties so wild with knotty filigree i ‘bout
flooded the ho’ damn garrison with jizzum while she
swang those glug a lug jugs like dos round, cheek-soft
rockpiles capped with snow made to glow a warm pink
under the late night motel sunrise creeping up o’er the
snake-neck curve o’ the valley in her glad ass a-workin’
circles in the air lasso style with all us cowboys trigger
skipping our six shooters making that raspberry liquid
squirt out in hog-snot uneasy streams into our leather
boots this serious night the firefight blasted the handle
bar mustache clean off my choppers along with a hunk
of my shoulder as Ms. Lala kept dervishing as if she were
a whorehouse fountain gushing all gifts of sick life to
me, the one hombre covered in the blood of the dead
and the still breathing, who set out to lay in the dirt
with all that good woman-ness & forget ‘bout what
the hell ever’ one thinks the goddamned mornin’ is.