Disguised in a three-piece suit,
the Cowboy has made off with Helen of Troy.
Already leagues from the rubble of city walls,
the dust rises in billows as they
fly away breakneck on his Trusty Steed.
They hear the echoing uproar breaking
at their heels. Helen's hair is a streaming
banner of war, skin flushing a ruddy apple red.
She thinks of Golden Paris in his silence
reposed in long limbed quiet on their gilded bed,
waiting for her, for the fire to peel away
their faces, the scent of burnt fruit and decadent spoils
our sacrifice to the tittering gods, the insatiable Aphrodite.

But Helen rides.
The wind smells like foreign spices waiting for
her tongue. She breathes in the sweat on the back
of the Cowboys neck. Freedom is musk and cotton,
the rumbling murmur of water channels and ravines
rocking under their feet.

They sink into the western horizon and
I turn away from their embrace,
pausing to watch glorious Troy fall into
fast decay under their lengthening shadow.