At the horizon
a cottonwood stands alone
with a hangman’s branch.Its creek flows nearby,
shade for horses and settlers
and vicious outlaws.Not a soul for miles,
treasures hauled down dusty trails,
stopped to ease parched throats.Riders’ silhouettes
taint the vista with their dusk.
Unwelcome strangers.“Just passin’ through. My
your daughter sure is pretty.”
Vile grins leer fireside.Mother’s wolfbane stew,
Father’s shotgun full of nails,
Brother’s braided rope.Behind, dark shapes swing.
Prairie justice swiftly served.
Red soil feeds deep roots.
Anonymole - apocryphal agitators 
I love this, I think you do well with the dark humor
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A Wild West story told in haiku.
I love it.
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Did ya hear the one about the farmer’s daughter and the travelling salesman? Talk about cliche, I came in to cool off, switched on the TV and caught Walker TR as a cowboy. How did they get away with blatantly ripping off everybody?
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It was time for some simple cliche’, and what’s more tropey than the ol’ west?
The Westworld periodic philosophic monologues are rarely engaging, except when they focus on the future of AI and how it will view and treat humans. The script writers at least try. I wonder if they’ll be using GPT-4 here soon.
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Well done! The old west was no picnic.
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Thanks.
I know haiku should be these pithy, deep things. But, I had to wonder if one could tell a story with them, as simplistic as it turned out. 20 minutes for the words, about the same trying to get Dall-E to gen an image I liked.
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“Above all, a Haiku must be very simple and free of all poetic trickery and make a little picture and yet be as airy and graceful as a Vivaldi Pastorella.” Jack Kerouac
I’m not the only one who says the written word should be musical or it’s shit. Once upon a time in Ms. English Nazi’s class the assignment was nonsense Haiku. The point being regardless of content, seventeen syllables over three lines was not enough to take your brain completely out of gear. Try it.
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“My
your daughter sure is pretty.”
More food for the plants. Yiou’ve written a witty little diddy.
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It was a challenge I proposed with PH — write a story only using haiku.
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Thanks. That is a good one indeed. Could easily see the scene and feel the heat, the danger, and threat .
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A simple thing, way to cliche’, but was fun to write. Haikus as scenes, kinda works.
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