Murder from the Dark Side of Conscience

in a western town
a tv faces the music
a bar and two impostors
giving hell its round

killing all
sound the saxophone
brass permanently marred
with somebody dead's blood
the toxic reed diseased same-sex
blown

the rodeo belt
buckle fits the
organized crime the
name of that old agent
that died whispered through
the mic cam-assisted Mike and Sam
two Clydesdales pulling dead brick
weight in a draft horse competition
out at the fairgrounds monitored on
the bar tv the severed finger with a
ring still on it pulled out of the river
by someone fishin' the fly tied with the
mob a heavy red feather and priest sinker
scoured failing; feds are waiting
 
look around
your shoulder
there's somebody
who has the dark
side of your conscience
somebody who has ties to
years and signatures still
on those bar books and somebody
who knows the drug trade and racketeering
are in bed together where prison walls segregrate
heroin, opium, cocaine, and the meth pill, speed if
you will god won't be interfering murder from the dark
side of conscience

Copyright Ms. Sage Sweetwater, celebrity firebrand lesbian novelist