American Paisano

Set your détente high on the hill!
The senators who cry out,
While the idle paisano hails,
The citizen in arms who rides.

Headlong to dust, with horseweed
That hangs from lips blistered with boils,
From the ongoing heat of the lip burning sun.

Kicking up particles that scratch squinted eyes,
Uncovered in light which means the rider well,
As it guides to far away shores
where a foreign bell,
Tolls louder and louder as his soul falls into hell.

The senators are crying,
Julius waits silent before the flight,
But a kedge in paisley kerosene
wraps around his ankles tight,
For the hell that consumes
does delight in high flames at night,
To scorch the fat of the lips,
the smutch man calls dying.

Set your peace high on the hill!
The paisano returns in buskins
to empty oil fields,
He will drop his go-devil, stars and the stripes,
will lie gnashed on the ground,
sodden strewn in the weeds,
where those tumbled and burning
do blister and bleed.