Bad Blood & Bullets: Poetry by Marleen Bussma

A snarl of rocky chaos, granite spires, and tall sheer cliffs

look down on shaggy grassland where a kangaroo rat sniffs

the pungent smoke from campfires of Cochise and his bold band.

They torment stymied cavalry to live on tribal land.

Seductive copper, gold, and silver lure men to the slopes.

One prospector is told he will get nothing for his hopes,

except discovery of his tombstone as he seeks a claim.

A mother lode will give his mine and nearby town this name.

Saloons are fancy, strumpets brazen, while the money flows.

Bad blood between the residents of Cochise County grows.

Large numbers of the rural folk resent the influence

of townspeople and business owners. Grievances are tense.

Confederate sympathizers clash with those from northern states.

Fierce friction of their cultures grows. A reckoning awaits.

Bold cattle rustlers thieve at will supplying local beef.

The outlaws, labeled Cowboys, give the honest cowmen grief.

The Cowboys move like weather out across the open land

with no regard for county lines, state borders, or a brand.

They raid across the U.S. border into Mexico.

Resentful international claims of rustling start to grow.

McLaurys and the Clantons face down Earps and Holliday

in Cochise County’s infamous corral-encountered fray.

This killing doesn’t stop the hatred built up over time.

John Slaughter brings the peace as sheriff as he cleans up crime.

The flooded mines are quiet. The San Pedro River flows.

A fabled history walks the streets of Tombstone where it shows

a city that’s notorious like Boothill where culprits lie.

Unlike nefarious outlaws, it’s the town too tough to die.