You've heard a tale or two 'bout me,
blown up by cowpokes, buff'ler hunters,
gun-totin' blowhards drinkin' red eye.
How I've stayed the dance one surely wonders.
The posters say I rob trains and banks
in shoot-ups where scant few survive.
That's their say-so, it's purely bunkum,
yet I'm wanted, friend, dead or alive!
At Shiloh's where this path began.
T'was wounded bad and left for dead.
A Yankee lootin' bloated bodies
jabbed the wounded, sneered as they bled.
When he saw me shudder, heard me moan,
he raised that bloody bayonet.
Then his eyes went wide, my pistol barked.
A righteous kill with no regret.
That was my first, but not the last.
I recovered, deserted, and headed west.
Punched cattle on the Chisholm Trail,
fought Sioux on the Bozeman, a hornet's nest.
A decade gone, notches on each gun,
but ne'er am I the first to draw.
Drunk gamblers, hotheads call me out.
It's kill or be killed, Nature's law.
A man looks down his back trail often.
Best thing to do is out and ride.
There'll be no wife or family,
and no stone marker where I died.
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| Writing Prompt |
Since the Cat Stevens titles prompt was so popular, I thought I'd create another prompt but this time with a Bon Jovi flavour!
I hope your creative juices are stirred and the places fill up just as quickly :)
Choose one of the following titles.
Where does it take you?
Get writing: poem, fiction, essay, whatever you like!
200 words maximum word count.
Wanted Dead or Alive
Bed of Roses
Bad Medicine
Runaway
Never Say Goodbye
Lay Your Hands On Me
Blaze of Glory
(The titles listed are titles of tracks from the Bon Jovi album - Cross Road)
The title of your work MUST be the title you chose from the list. (There shouldn't be any confusion in the booth for duplicate entries of title, as your name will be displayed alongside your entry.)
Artwork and author notes welcome. |
Author Notes
This artwork is courtesy of Google images.
word count: Apple Works 195
This story is purely fiction. The speaker is a composite of many of the gunmen of the Old West whose exploits caused them to be wanted dead or alive.
The setting is circa 1872-73 somewhere between the Rockies and the Mississippi.
Shiloh was a Civil War battle fought on the western front in 1862. It was a bloody Union victory.
The Chisholm Trail was the first great cattle trail leading from Texas to Kansas. Cowboys drove long-horns almost 1000 miles, across deserts, rivers, and through Indian country.
The Bozeman Trail opened soon after the Civil War ended when gold was discovered in Montana. A string of forts were erected along that trail to protect the Americans. Red Cloud, a Sioux chief, fought a war against the soldiers and WON, forcing the forts to close and the soldiers to pull out.
My protagonist wore two guns, one on each hip. Vanity perhaps caused him to carve a notch on the handle of the weapon for each man killed in a gunfight.
Few of these gunmen lived very long. Someone was almost always faster or they were bushwhacked like Wild Bill Hickok in Deadwood.
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