Lawless At High Noon Poem by Clive Culverhouse

Things were about to get nasty. The gunslingers,
wide-legged stances that screamed Mondays,
stood ready to storm City Hall. And to enter from
the west side, our three wastrels took the library
not caring about books, not caring about library
etiquette and not caring about fragments and
bite sizes and though the lacy, frilled librarian
had shushed moments before, she would shush
again, imminently. The oldest of our three, a
prickly one, raged synonyms of a vulgarity picked
up from a deeper south, hurtling through takes and
measurements only an acrobat would sing. The
youngest, fingers like a carpenter's, wrists like a
crucified Christ, could only surround his pitted
memories. While the middle of our three, a bull,
a hopper of seismic tremors, caught the brunt of
the librarian's shushes and, luckily for him, amid
an ambience of gartered thigh in candlelight, he
could hear, his own temperament flailing lavishly
in a nearby moon mist, the silky tones of her shush.