R
RyanEhf
Guest
Gunslinger at Showdown
The Red sun blasts
The cold dust,
Which twirls upward
In tiny whirlwinds
From halted, hard heels
Scraping scars in sediment.
The land, dry.
Pitted and encrusted and tufted
With wind eaten hair grass,
Like scaly rock hide
On the back of some half-reptilian beast
Of unfathomable mass.
The track stretcheth out before him,
A pebbled ribbon,
Distorting as it slides
Towards the limits
Of his eyes.
The red light,
Sort of orange-ish,
Denies it’s failing,
Clinging to pebbles before it dies.
A hard shadow casts it’s own
In a place of dim sight.
On the last perceptible rise
A totem,
A granite finger,
Piercing the encrusted hide,
Looked up
And saw Gunslinger.
As Gunslinger did see him.
In one
Particle jump instant,
Half unbeknownst
To either participant and recipient,
An ancient umbilicus
Bridged their particular gap
And worlds of meaning
Flashed between them,
Which, with equal brevity,
Shrank to an atomic size
And was lodged in the thick glue
Binding their rickety framework.
One foot
The shadow hefted forward,
Then clamped down
Once again on the dust dry,
His steel star clinking faintly.
And so does Gunslinger not mimic,
But clone the action,
His steel star
Clinking faintly.
Agonisingly slow
They approach
A mentally constructed
Dot,
Centered
In the relative space
Between them,
On the open road.
Faster now
The foot throws go,
Springing off dust clouds
Emerging like mushrooms
Somehow without a sound
From the grit below.
Faster, faster, faster
The foot throws go,
As bull charges bull,
As Gunslinger and Dark One
Approacheth the middle!
Now does Gunslinger draw,
His arm long,
His missiles pronged
And primed
And high
As they rend
And rip
And reach
Like talons of eagles
While shrieking
They breached
The dead sky!
And so,
The Dark One
Does produce
A perfect clone.
Only one missile
Found a mark of matter
That was not of grasses,
Or sand,
Or stone.
Arrow straight it dove
Into the heart
Of he that was darkest,
Where it buried its head
And did find there its home.
The Dark One clutched at muscle and bone,
Now shattered,
Once whole,
And rolled in the grit,
Glove pressed to his chest
As droplets of blood
Did spill through his hold.
Of deepest cherry red were those drops
That beaded and slid
Across leathery folds.
Quickly, one after another they fell
To the ground,
To the grit,
Which devoured them all,
No stain left they,
No trace of recall.
Now does Gunslinger
Approach the Dark One
On seeing him fall.
Him,
His cloak black,
Yet shrouded
In silvery mists.
His eyes bristling, brimming
With the worst of all curses,
His hatred,
His sins.
Gunslinger approcheth,
His steel stars
Clinking distinctly.
The Dark One grins.
His eyes flash as smouldering blasts
From the dying remnants of red hot ash.
In one piercing glance
From those fiery caves
The Dark One made clear the Iron of the Universe
Which there did lay.
And it did seem to say,
“You can kill me
Only so much
As you can kill thee.”
Nevertheless,
Gunslinger approacheth.
Never regressive was he,
In all his time and life,
In all he had seen.
Never had he looked back,
Or run.
Never had his own hand
Shook his own gun.
So why turn now?
After all,
This was the pinnacle of his existence,
One final, fantastic celebration
Of all that entailed a lifetime of persistence.
Step by steady step
The Gunslinger moved.
Step by step
His shadow loomed,
Like a rigid wave,
Towards his rebirth,
Towards his own doom.
Now he halts and does seem to take root,
Or become a grey fossil,
Not two feet away
From his destiny’s object:
This thing cloaked in black,
Stonily grinning,
A matter of fact.
Infinite eternities it seemed did pass,
Not between them,
But to their sides and backs,
As the planets and stars
Of innumerable galaxies
Swivelled and danced,
And molecules
Bumped
And thundered
And crashed.
One could almost hear it,
Like a distant torrent.
Caught in the eye
Of the storm
Of entropy they were,
And so,
They ignored it.
All focus lay,
Like a heavy pinnacle,
On the face of the nemesis.
Drawn blades
Only acknowledged
In some distant way
As they were clenched
In iron tight fists.
The Dark One,
One hand still clutched at his left breast
Which,
To the deadly river
Headed from there,
Brought no halt,
No rest.
Gunslinger stood
Like a lost monument of justice,
Etched away
Into the grey twilight of his life,
Loveless,
Lustless.
A ruthless,
Tooth-filled swooping
Of his knife
Aimed at the neck of his prey
Gleamed molten in the fading red light,
And split asunder
The fibres of the Dark One.
Caught up in his own sudden tumult,
Gunslinger gaped
At the yellow teeth
Protruding through blood
In the shape of a brutish grin,
Which lay on the face of his prey.
Yet in those eyes only triumph did shine,
Not death,
Nor dismay.
Then the light dawned on him,
It shone on his face
As he felt the tickle
Of trickling,
The leaking of life force,
The genes of his race
Go sliding down skin
To decorate threads
Like colourful paints.
Gunslinger did not look,
And did not have to guess
At the Dark One’s blade
Caught in his neck,
As croaking laughter
Seemed to seal his death.
And there they lay in a symmetrical heap,
As the red tide air
Crooned and whispered of sleep.
And the lonesome winds whined
And twirled the dust.
Upward and upward,
Forever it sang,
Yet never remaining,
Never once tranquil,
In a sky of pure rust
The cold dust,
Which twirls upward
In tiny whirlwinds
From halted, hard heels
Scraping scars in sediment.
The land, dry.
Pitted and encrusted and tufted
With wind eaten hair grass,
Like scaly rock hide
On the back of some half-reptilian beast
Of unfathomable mass.
The track stretcheth out before him,
A pebbled ribbon,
Distorting as it slides
Towards the limits
Of his eyes.
The red light,
Sort of orange-ish,
Denies it’s failing,
Clinging to pebbles before it dies.
A hard shadow casts it’s own
In a place of dim sight.
On the last perceptible rise
A totem,
A granite finger,
Piercing the encrusted hide,
Looked up
And saw Gunslinger.
As Gunslinger did see him.
In one
Particle jump instant,
Half unbeknownst
To either participant and recipient,
An ancient umbilicus
Bridged their particular gap
And worlds of meaning
Flashed between them,
Which, with equal brevity,
Shrank to an atomic size
And was lodged in the thick glue
Binding their rickety framework.
One foot
The shadow hefted forward,
Then clamped down
Once again on the dust dry,
His steel star clinking faintly.
And so does Gunslinger not mimic,
But clone the action,
His steel star
Clinking faintly.
Agonisingly slow
They approach
A mentally constructed
Dot,
Centered
In the relative space
Between them,
On the open road.
Faster now
The foot throws go,
Springing off dust clouds
Emerging like mushrooms
Somehow without a sound
From the grit below.
Faster, faster, faster
The foot throws go,
As bull charges bull,
As Gunslinger and Dark One
Approacheth the middle!
Now does Gunslinger draw,
His arm long,
His missiles pronged
And primed
And high
As they rend
And rip
And reach
Like talons of eagles
While shrieking
They breached
The dead sky!
And so,
The Dark One
Does produce
A perfect clone.
Only one missile
Found a mark of matter
That was not of grasses,
Or sand,
Or stone.
Arrow straight it dove
Into the heart
Of he that was darkest,
Where it buried its head
And did find there its home.
The Dark One clutched at muscle and bone,
Now shattered,
Once whole,
And rolled in the grit,
Glove pressed to his chest
As droplets of blood
Did spill through his hold.
Of deepest cherry red were those drops
That beaded and slid
Across leathery folds.
Quickly, one after another they fell
To the ground,
To the grit,
Which devoured them all,
No stain left they,
No trace of recall.
Now does Gunslinger
Approach the Dark One
On seeing him fall.
Him,
His cloak black,
Yet shrouded
In silvery mists.
His eyes bristling, brimming
With the worst of all curses,
His hatred,
His sins.
Gunslinger approcheth,
His steel stars
Clinking distinctly.
The Dark One grins.
His eyes flash as smouldering blasts
From the dying remnants of red hot ash.
In one piercing glance
From those fiery caves
The Dark One made clear the Iron of the Universe
Which there did lay.
And it did seem to say,
“You can kill me
Only so much
As you can kill thee.”
Nevertheless,
Gunslinger approacheth.
Never regressive was he,
In all his time and life,
In all he had seen.
Never had he looked back,
Or run.
Never had his own hand
Shook his own gun.
So why turn now?
After all,
This was the pinnacle of his existence,
One final, fantastic celebration
Of all that entailed a lifetime of persistence.
Step by steady step
The Gunslinger moved.
Step by step
His shadow loomed,
Like a rigid wave,
Towards his rebirth,
Towards his own doom.
Now he halts and does seem to take root,
Or become a grey fossil,
Not two feet away
From his destiny’s object:
This thing cloaked in black,
Stonily grinning,
A matter of fact.
Infinite eternities it seemed did pass,
Not between them,
But to their sides and backs,
As the planets and stars
Of innumerable galaxies
Swivelled and danced,
And molecules
Bumped
And thundered
And crashed.
One could almost hear it,
Like a distant torrent.
Caught in the eye
Of the storm
Of entropy they were,
And so,
They ignored it.
All focus lay,
Like a heavy pinnacle,
On the face of the nemesis.
Drawn blades
Only acknowledged
In some distant way
As they were clenched
In iron tight fists.
The Dark One,
One hand still clutched at his left breast
Which,
To the deadly river
Headed from there,
Brought no halt,
No rest.
Gunslinger stood
Like a lost monument of justice,
Etched away
Into the grey twilight of his life,
Loveless,
Lustless.
A ruthless,
Tooth-filled swooping
Of his knife
Aimed at the neck of his prey
Gleamed molten in the fading red light,
And split asunder
The fibres of the Dark One.
Caught up in his own sudden tumult,
Gunslinger gaped
At the yellow teeth
Protruding through blood
In the shape of a brutish grin,
Which lay on the face of his prey.
Yet in those eyes only triumph did shine,
Not death,
Nor dismay.
Then the light dawned on him,
It shone on his face
As he felt the tickle
Of trickling,
The leaking of life force,
The genes of his race
Go sliding down skin
To decorate threads
Like colourful paints.
Gunslinger did not look,
And did not have to guess
At the Dark One’s blade
Caught in his neck,
As croaking laughter
Seemed to seal his death.
And there they lay in a symmetrical heap,
As the red tide air
Crooned and whispered of sleep.
And the lonesome winds whined
And twirled the dust.
Upward and upward,
Forever it sang,
Yet never remaining,
Never once tranquil,
In a sky of pure rust
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