So many cowboys

So many cowboys

Work the buildings

Undiscovered philanthropists

Pouring concrete, pebble dashing

Dreaming of Pollock.

There are Wannabee painters,

Sculptors

Actors, wearing blue jeans

Believing in gunsmoke

Free to carry paint guns, unconcealed

No live ammunition on set

So they say.

Do they all live that way?

Dreaming of sagebrush

And tumbleweed

Making connections with dealers

Freewheelers

Ambient faces, lending colour

To their lives

In the form of a backstory.

Writing a list of sundries needed

To complete a loft-conversion

Trying to make it rhyme.

Wondering where all the bodies can be buried

In a dry cellar

The meaning of quick-lime

Wistfully recalling

Basement tapes.

Discovering a lost manuscript

Hidden treasure

Praying for a break in the weather

Preparing to give a monologue

About a state of disrepair.

Hiking the price for the thrill

Of telling a story

With conviction.

Playing for time

Never believing they are

Where they are meant to be

Lost in tales of imaginary westerns.

Cowboys at heart

Pirates in Penzance

Waiting for their ship to come in.

Resting between lines

Playing the role of a lifetime

In an under-rehearsed

Improv-set

Building a portfolio

Out of anecdotes