Smoking Cowboy-killers the Day After Easter

You kept
It
Down
Swallowed like Buds
It
6 feet
When you were young.
Then

Daisies
You raised, live-stock
They made you.

You took every losing breath,
through your cancered nose
as though you were middle aged

When you were older.

You watched John Wayne
You smoked cigarettes
and stubbed a toe,
doctors amputated your senile leg,

and made you Quit at
Eighty years.

4 more
You know Elizabeth?
will bath you
with saline eyes

And your Sons?
Will hold
It
In, or
Take
It
Out on fawn.
Now

You told me, “ You
can do whatever you want…
just don’t let me catch you.”

It
Caught you.