[RedM]: Outlaw's Lament - 4
The Highwayman
I have a dream some nights That I'm lying in bed– It's 1899 again And I'm stewing in the horrors that year had once bred. It's 1899 again and I'm sick as a dog I lie in bed, my mind a fog. I'd been panicked and scared Cornered and shot A bullet to the back Then captured and caught. When my body healed and my time had been served We took our own knife to the stitches. I should have waited for a doctor, but found no rest for the wicked. The tools unclean Sickness spread from my wound I dulled the pain with morphine But knew I would run out soon. In this dream I see my brother Entering with a gust of mountain air. He sets a stew at my bedside table And as I sit up, I can only lock eyes and stare Everything my brother had, He had taken at the business end Of a gun But everything he had taken, He gave it to us. Money and food Weapons and meds All of it to keep a roof over our heads. They threatened him with the noose, The last time we'd been in cuffs. Asked if he was scared-- Tried to test his guts. Though down his forehead I'd watched the sweat bead, He answered simply: "I've too many mouths left to feed." Sitting there in our hideout, He polishes blood from his gun I work up my courage And ask what he's done. He describes the scene, A robbery-gone-wrong A handful of us An honest man and a wagon of food, and rum. "It didn't have to be that way--" A highwayman's lament. But the fella laid hands on him And so that's how it went. Blood painted the wagon And pooled bigger than he'd ever seen. They rifled through his supplies And left him there to bleed. A life in the balance No doctor to intervene. My brother shows me his neck Where the man's hands left a bruise And shows me the obituary Written in the freshly-printed news. He describes it all without missing a beat Holsters his gun, And takes a seat. But as he lights a cigar And takes a drag Softly I hear him muse: "...The man risked all that, over five bucks And some stews." Whatever his expression is, I don't see it (Though, I hardly need to) My eyes could never leave the bowl between my hands And I knew for any of us, There was nothing My brother wouldn't do. But it's 1901 now And my brother is dead. December 1899, we were attacked and fled Cornered and shot Captured, caught, hunted, and bled I wake from the dream In a puddle of sweat And try to forget that they killed my family For a paycheck.