I first found Sundance bleeding in the desert like a dog.
Dirt stuck to him in broken window panes,
he bent his neck toward me in parts.
Spoke through eyes red like Arizona rock.
******* was so *****,
looked like the desert spat him up.
Turns out it was the next town over.
They’d never done a proper hanging, before.
What happens when you’ve never done a
proper hanging before is loose hands.
Loose hands have a tendency
toward knives.
Sheriff sort of looked like a cross,
on his back,
that big knife stickin’ straight up like
a piece of glass.
Almost looked like Christ,
all curled up,
shining bright,
golden in all that dust.
Sundance drowned the devil in the Rio Grande.
Sundance had hands that were ****** quick.
I once saw him on a slow day.
Even then, they didn’t get to see the lightning,
people on the wrong end.
All they got was that black-hole barrel.
Must have looked like a third eye, on the other side.
Must have looked like a sunset.
Sundance’s tequila-blues,
a little shimmer, orange, red.
Six sunsets in three seconds
he was that quick.
In Bolivia we met two hundred Federalies
and I first saw him shake.
He said everything’s upside-down on the other
side of the equator and sunsets happen
the wrong ****** direction here.
Said we got lazy and let the Texas
spin us over the wrong way.
I bet he was quick enough to see the lightning
before the black.
Sundance told me when the world ends,
it’ll start in Texas.
Said there’s a few canyons there that’ll swallow
the whole ****** planet if we’re not too careful.
Said we’ll be wakin’ up next to ****** snakes,
before anyone notices.