[lastofthecowboys]

[lastofthecowboys]

I showed up

when it cost something.

When the air was thick with endings

and love meant endurance, not applause.

I wiped mouths.

I held hands that shook.

I learned the weight of a body

that knows it’s running out of time.

I stayed

while others kept their distance.

I bled in the quiet hours

where loyalty isn’t witnessed

and sacrifice doesn’t get remembered.

I treated legacy like law.

Like something holy.

Like a man’s final words

weren’t suggestions to be revised

when they became inconvenient.

I believed—fool that I was—

that care carried weight.

That devotion was currency.

That blood meant blood.

But when death finally closed the door

and the reckoning should have come,

I learned the truth:

The patient are easy to rob.

The faithful are easy to lie to.

The ones who stay

are the ones you take from.

I gave and gave and gave

until giving became expected,

until it counted for nothing,

until my loyalty was treated

like a resource to be extracted.

Promises were spoken

only long enough to keep me quiet.

A year of lies

so hope could rot slowly

without causing a scene.

And when the taking was finished,

they pointed to paper and said,

“This is how the world works.”

As if legality were justice.

As if convenience were virtue.

As if a dead man’s wishes

could be erased without consequence.

I watched inheritance turn into theft

with clean hands and no remorse.

I watched family choose comfort

over honor

and call it peace.

I was the good son.

The good grandson.

The one who earned nothing

because I believed in something.

And the reward

for my restraint,

my care,

my silence,

was a slap delivered

with a smile

and a lesson I never asked to learn:

That love doesn’t protect you.

That fairness isn’t owed.

And that sometimes the ones who bleed the most

are simply expected

to bleed again.

[lastofthecowboys]

I cast myself upon the shore,

shattering bone against ancient stone.

The tide drags me out, throws me back,

but I rise with every wave.

The world ends in attrition —

everything erodes.

So let the sea judge which fades first:

my will,

or the ancient rock that dares defy it.

[lastofthecowboys]

Running on Empty

I’m tired in a way that sleep can’t fix.

Not just heavy eyes — it’s in my chest,

in my bones,

in the space where hope used to echo.

I keep showing up.

Keep moving.

Because what else is there?

No pause button.

No soft place to land.

Just more noise, more weight,

more people needing things I don’t have left to give.

I used to have a spark—

dreams, plans, maybe even joy.

Now it’s just routine,

held together with deep breaths and caffeine.

I’m broken.

Just… emptied out.

Like a house with the lights still on,

but no one home.

I don’t need saving.

I just need

a moment.

A silence.

A reason.

[lastofthecowboys]

The Weight of the Unmoving

I press my hands against the stone,

fingers raw from years of strain.

The cold does not yield, the weight does not shift,

yet I push, again and again.

The wind howls with a hollow voice,

a chorus of all who have tried before.

Their echoes vanish into the void,

swallowed by a world that keeps no score.

I have screamed at the sky, begged for a break,

cursed the silence, cursed the grind.

But the stars do not stir, the earth does not shake,

and time is deaf to the desperate mind.

Still, I lean into the endless fight,

knowing the outcome, knowing the pain.

Not for hope, not for light,

but because surrender is a deeper stain.

Let the world be vast and cruel,

let the mountain refuse to fall.

I will break before I bow,

and I will stand, despite it all.

[lastofthecowboys]

The Last Cowboy’s Lament

What’s left of Texas for a man like me,

When the wild is tamed and the plains can’t breathe?

The longhorns are ghosts, the buffalo bones,

The prairie chicken no longer moans.

The mustangs, once wild, are dreams now lost,

Their hoofbeats silenced, a terrible cost.

The red wolf’s cry no longer roams,

And bears have vanished from their homes.

The bobwhite’s whistle fades in the air,

Its cadence swallowed by towns unaware.

The jackrabbit darts where it still can flee,

Through fences strangling its legacy.

Tallgrass prairies, oceans of gold,

Plowed under for profits, bought and sold.

The soil wears scars it cannot heal,

While the land forgets how freedom feels.

This land was stolen, first with blood,

From those who lived where tall grass stood.

Cowboys claimed it with iron and plow,

But who defends it for them now?

Where bison once thundered and broke the ground,

Subdivisions rise without a sound.

Mansions crown the hills like thorns,

Mocking the west where it was born.

Streams that ran clear now barely creep,

Prairie dog towns lie silent, asleep.

The mockingbird sings, but the air feels thin,

As if it knows where the west has been.

The Indians lost their sacred way,

Then cowboys came, and even they slipped away.

Now their claim turns to dust,

Their ranches crushed beneath the thrust—

Of cities, roads, and foreign dreams,

Of people blind to what it means.

Now houses sprout where monarchs once flew,

With strangers who don’t want Texas true.

They pave the past, they box the skies,

They never hear the west’s faint cries.

And so, the cowboy fades from sight,

A flickering ghost in the dying light.

The land is shattered, worn and spent,

A hollow shell of what it meant.

There’s nothing to do, no fight to win,

The world moves on while we sit within.

And maybe the west was doomed to die,

To vanish beneath this crowded sky.

So I’ll wait here, quiet, bitter, and still,

While they take the prairies and carve the hills.

What’s left of Texas slips through my hand,

A fading echo, a dying land.

[lastofthecowboys]