Kid Grimm

image borrowed from bing

Kid Grimm

“If I’m going to kill you, you’ll be awake,

you’ll be facing me, & you’ll be armed.”

--Malcolm Reynolds

Kid Grimm, 

Reginald to his mother,

was a short drink of water;

it left him with a hair-trigger temper

& big knuckled hands that loved

to hover over the twin Colt Peacemakers

strapped down to each leg.

Like a lot of pistolero punks

scattered across the Southwest,

he was a handsome lad,

with long curly blond hair

& piercing green eyes;

at first fresh off the farm,

still having the faint odor of cow dung

on his expensive tooled leather boots,

& perhaps the odd hay blade tucked

up within his rolled pants cuffs;

but that gave way to dandy duds,

starched striped shirts, long gaudy

scarves cinched up with a gold skull,

black suit, with a tailed jacket, gray

silk vest, & silver cufflinks.

He began practicing with his father’s

Navy Colt when he was ten, spending 

his allowance on ammunition,

firing thousands of rounds, forever

standing out in the barnyard blasting

at brown bottles, jars, & jugs--

assassinating them all. 

He became a bona fide gunfighter

before he was 15, killed his first man

out in the street with the whole town watching;

he had a pine stick, they say, that he called

his death stick, and it had 30 notches carved

into it, with room for 30 more.

He did love the ladies,

& the whores all over town

loved him, loved his looks

& his fat wad of cash.

One night the year before

he shot a miner in the groin

for disrespecting Miss Annie,

one of his favorites.

He enjoyed gambling, 

had a real passion for it; 

poker was his game,

until the night it became

his unraveling,

when Claude Haven sat himself down

at one of the beer-stained green felt

covered tables directly across

from the Kid, slapping a fat pile

of greenbacks alongside a tall stack

of twenty dollar gold pieces. 

The Kid’s jade eyes lit up,

shining with mescal & arrogance.

He drew for an inside straight,

but the cards betrayed him.

He was all in, 500 bucks in the pot,

so he put on the glower & the bluff--

but old Claude had a full house,

aces over tens.

The Kid exploded, howling

like a wasp-stung bear,

as his big hands dove down

for the waiting Colts, dangling

from his waist like twin silver cocks;

it seems that Haven was prepared,

he had one of those terrible tiny

one-shot derringers, spring-loaded

under his coat sleeve, just above his right wrist.

The French pop gun made its small noise,

and the hot slug parted

the Kid’s eyebrows, burrowing

like a tick of lightning knuckle-deep

into his brain, so

before the Colt twins could bark death,

death itself leaped ravenously upon him,

taking his youth, devouring the light.

Claude Haven played the Big Man

for about a month until two half-breeds

backshot him in alley in Tombstone.

I wonder what he said to the Kid

when they met up in the town

of Glory?

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets MTB

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