One Good Thing about Pain

The long blonde tells me
it keeps her from thinking of you.
She thought the cowboy would be enough,
him with his heart hard enough to kick
with those boots fitting the instep
she loved to fit her cheek into.
She’s tired of Tucson.
She’s tired of beans and rice.
She’s tired of dust and no rain,
camouflage thrown over the land like war.

I tell her to steal the last gas on earth,
cross the border of the moon at midnight,
no passport, nothing new to remember,
only horses to break
over rounded mesas of resurrection.
Hooves spark like stars imploding
in the belly of a universe sounding hungry.
I tell her to offer sweet barley and long dogs.

She asks about you: she always asks about you.
I’d rather speak of horses I look for everyday,
find only in mad thunderstorms,
purple clouds gathering themselves for one last run
through my heart like a sloppy fist.
Hooves can change the world.