I never got around to fixing the metrics on this one, but I was once tempted to finish it and send it off...
The Wannabe
When darkness settles o'er the West
the working day is done;
when daylight's warmth has slipped away
with the setting of the sun,
the cowpokes sit around the fire
to recite the pedigree
of a fire-brand horse called Marble-eye,
and his rider Wannabe.
No one recalls his actual name
or precisely where he was from.
He wandered on the ranch one day
as green as green can come.
They asked him where he'd hailed from,
He said, "Yonder - way back east."
"Well, what the hell did you do back there?"
"I'm a respiratory therapist."
Now some of the cowpokes laughed at this
while others only snickered,
but Wannabe wasn't bothered at all,
for in his mind he pictured
himself a seasoned cowboy -
a hero tall and lean.
He mosey'd over to the corral
and squinting, surveyed the scene
of horseflesh - powerful mustangs - with
a semi-practiced eye;
the cowboys all stopped laughing
when he mounted Marble-eye.
Now Marble-eye was just as mean
as a kitten newly born,
and just to sit this hell-spawned beast
he gripped the saddle horn.
They bolted through an open gate,
across the fruited plain,
and sadly, so the story goes,
were never seen again.
But when the firelight flickers low,
the cows are bedded down,
the coyotes start their nightly howl,
that lonesome, soul-less sound,
a hideous shriek may pierce the night
and echo through the sky.
They say it's the sound of Wannabe
on that fire-brand Marble-eye.
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