The Lamentable Tragedy of Bonnie McGee

Way out in the west,

Stood a town, none too blessed,

Gehenna was its all too apt name,

For all of life’s woes,

Or so the tale goes,

The town took the lion’s share of blame.



On a too sultry day,

Came uninvited to play,

A bard of the widest renown,

Its carriage it planted,

It raved, screamed, and ranted,

And did judge the little, old town.



They’d first caught its sight,

Just shy of first light,

Crossing the broad River Red,

As the carriage did stop,

And its panels did drop,

All gawkers should really have fled.



The thing abruptly appeared,

At first, none was afeared,

‘A Player!’ did most proclaim,

The dread, it set in,

As the one from within,

Their transgressions, started to name.



Its visage, most odd,

Neither man, nor quite god,

Its ears and teeth were all pointed,

Its eyes were pure fire,

They fair blazed with ire,

Its brows, with horns were anointed.



‘All here hath bled’

The infernal thing said,

‘Guilt’s blood, so black, thick and sour,

I know each your sins,

Your vast outs and ins,

Not just the month, but the day and the hour!’



‘From afar have I come,

To find you, dear scum,

Complicit, have been all of ye,

In the foul degradation,

And the ensuing cessation,

Of poor, wee Bonnie McGee.’



They looked at each other,

Fathers, brides, friends, and mothers,

And one among them spoke up,

‘I’ve seen Hickok and Cody’

As two huge pistols, showed he,

‘Who’s this storm in a tiny teacup?’



‘I am the finger that points,

Your peace to disjoint,

I am accuser, judgement, and noose.’

‘Not all were involved!’

Cried a girl, hard resolved,

Her face red, as she let protest loose.



The creature’s visage turned dark,

Its manner fierce, hard, yet stark,

‘This whole thing’s negotiable, is it?

Some of you raped, beat, and maimed her,

But the bystanders samed her,

Their inaction made them complicit.’



Murmuring spread out like illness,

First came silence, then stillness,

As the creature played pipes carved from bone,

The townsfolk stood to attention,

And its worthy of mention,

That they were forced, for their sins, to atone.



With a flit of clawed fingers,

None allowed there to linger,

All Gehenna’s inhabitants marched,

Through the thoroughfare moved they,

Their obedience, proved they,

And the thing said he thought them all parched.



‘To the water’s edge I deliver,

To the raging Red River,

My offering of man, woman, and child!

As the waters, they take you,

Lest appreciation forsake you,

Know that my sentence is decidedly mild!’



In parts now much hated,

Sits a town depopulated,

Gehenna was once its name,

Til a Devil did land there,

And took its hoofed stand where,

Bonnie McGee gained her ill-gotten fame.



And the carriage made more stops just the same.