Backdropp Addresses Cowboy

Starspangled cowboy sauntering out of the almost- silly West, on your face a porcelain grin, tugging a papier-mache cactus on wheels behind you with a string, you are innocent as a bathtub full of bullets. Your righteous eyes, your laconic trigger-fingers people the streets with villains: as you move, the air in front of you blossoms with targets and you leave behind you a heroic trail of desolation: beer bottles slaughtered by the side of the road, bird- skulls bleaching in the sunset. I ought to be watching from behind a cliff or a cardboard storefront when the shooting starts, hands clasped in admiration, but I am elsewhere. Then what about me what about the I confronting you on that border you are always trying to cross? I am the horizon you ride towards, the thing you can never lasso I am also what surrounds you: my brain scattered with your tincans, bones, empty shells, the litter of your invasions. I am the space you desecrate as you pass through.