Red Rock Country

Why do so many Americans
still saddle up in cowboy lands,
where every man must ride alone
and freedom comes with guns in hand?

Why feel so naked without the steel
of a double-barrelled gun,
or a V-8 roaring like a bronco,
or a Bible, and a six-pack?

Too many wear myths like cowboy boots,
stomping across the urban prairies,
and call it rugged independence.

But beyond the movie sets,
where the asphalt meets the plain,
the working poor keep riding hard
beneath a dust storm of payroll rain.

They punch the clock from dawn to dusk,
then saddle up for overtime,
while distant cattle barons
count their gold, play poker,
and play politics, a way to veneer crime.

Billboards promise open roads;
Highways promise choice.
The loudest guns command the range,
and money buys the voice.

So Americans keep riding west,
though west has disappeared —
past strip malls, mines, and shopping carts,
past every frontier feared.

The markets smell the gun smoke.
The pundits strike the match.
The cowboys check their ammunition
while Wall Street counts the cash.

So saddle up, America —
the prairie lights are red.
The richest men have horses;
the rest are fed the dead.

The showdown may be coming,
but here's the final joke:
The cowboys buy their bullets
from the very men they hoped to shoot.