Barbed Wire

Have you ever pondered
The cowboy’s fate;
When he confronted barbed wire
Without a gate?

When Joseph Glidden patented
His wire in 1873—
It marker an end to an era that was free.

Colorful was the cowboy,
With high heeled bots and chaps,
With lariats and six guns
And those necessary traps.

Their mournful songs are legend now
And still heard today,
About the girl they left behind
Or of their lowly pay.

In driving cattle o’er desert floor
Or o’er mountain pass,
They were often out of water
Or very short of grass.

All day he sat his saddle
‘til they settled down at night.
A yell, a shout, a thunderclap
Could move a herd to might

A frightened herd that starts to run—
Men trying to impede—
Riding hard to turn the herd
And stop a great stampede.
The trails went through territory
Sometimes fraught with danger:
Hostile Indians or rustlers
Were most unwelcome strangers.

But worst than that with canteens dry,
And hot enough to fry;
Then getting word back from the point,
“The waterhole is dry!”

Other hazards dogged their trail
Like a blizzard or a fire;
But the thing that got his dander up
Was to confront that darned barbed wire.

By: “Happy” Wore Red

Paper’s Tantrum

On that one fateful day,
While Paper watched a child play,
He exclaimed,”That’s it! I’m done!
After centuries of work, I want to have fun.”

“Ever since I was invented by Cai or Ts’ai Lun,
I’ve been overworked by most everyone
With not a word of thanks since I was invented out of the blue,
Guizhou Dynasty, A.D. 102.”

And Paper, unknowing as he was,
Did not want to look back because
He was sick of being treated that way;
He didn’t care for anyone else that day.

The mess that Paper created in his wake
Was like some freakish, extreme earthquake,
But different from an earthquake, quite a lot,
For this was a mind quake, people forgot.

People forgot the mere mention of Paper,
His resignation seemed to be some weird sort of caper.
There was now no paper on the earth,
The world had experienced a wacky rebirth.

People walked to and fro
With weighty stone slabs, on the go.
Also being carried were big hunks of wood.
For their backs, it was not looking good.

People everywhere lugged big loads around
With it, a laboring breathing sound.
This was what came from Paper’s silly mistake
Of just wanting a simple little break.

Schoolchildren everywhere had in their hands
An extreme load of stone instead of just crayons.
The meaning of homework now held a new threat,
Dropping this homework on your foot had a painful debt.


And so this world might have gone on
With breaking of toes for another eon,
But luckily Paper’s temper cooled down
For him to have a look-see around.

When Paper took in the mess that he made,
He realized he must come to people’s aid.
“I must come back,” he resolved.
So Paper decided to come back, but slightly more evolved.

Paper humbled himself and realized that he
Must concentrate hard to regain normality.
He thought and he thought of a paper-filled world,
And the slabs he was thinking of twisted and curled.

When Paper was done, he opened his eyes,
And all around, to his surprise,
Was the regular world, just as should be,
Paper was excited, he hopped with glee.

The lesson that Paper learned from all this
Was that when you feel ready to hiss,
Calm down a little, try to rethink,
Or you might end up with the world on a brink.

By: FunkyZebras19