The Showdown | Poem by David Michael Jackson

Start writing
don’t look up
feel the click of the keys
Remembering her thumbs
moving like magic on the phone
the screen flashing here and there
so fast
standing there amazed,
I
Tombstone Poet Standing in the Street
waiting for the showdown,
former whittler and tobacco hand,
stood amazed, cliche’d from the past,
“You sure can work that thing, and you aren’t even looking!”
“You have to message under the desk at school.”

Stone Age Poet, Tombstone Cowboy Poet,
you type your words so slowly above the desk,
Your horse is old and those stones that are your words
tumble down the side of your mountain
to the showdown