#gregory ormson

Shapeshifters and Sickness Givers: an evolving saga. Spoken word and music at https://soundcloud.com/greg-ormson/shapeshifters-and-sickness-givers-an-evolving-saga

(Gregory Ormson)

                                          MESCALERO TERRITORY

 His fever grew use to the soft light in the barn Where a sting of rats were leaving marks on his arm

 The room, he sensed, his place to die in.

 A bullet in his belly, still his dreams rose with him in the night’s rafters.

 He missed Paulita Maxwell’s body out on the moonlit porch of his desires

 His outlaw kisses riding across her neck, down through the valley of her legs.

  He wanted to be Billy the Kid in every word he said,

 his greasy voice speaking to bloated rats eating their way toward judgment.

 The last man he shot was Bob Ollinger, sad sonofabitch jailer who’d mocked him as young Billy

 HEY BOB, Billy shouted back from his escape, aimed the shotgun, blew Ollinger’s head off, and rode away into MESCALERO TERRITORY.

 Now, in the long cool shadows of the granary, Billy felt the ground barreling away

From under him when he stood up, lifted one foot off the floor and scooped up oats, feeding his mouth