High Plains Banker

He's one holy roller

He came rolling into town driving in Italian super suave style, an earthly god of spectacular virility and wealth. He had Rod Stewart hair and J Paul Getty disease. As his English custom shoes touched the ground, women competed bare-breasted to tie his Armani shoelaces. Men openly wailed in anguished jealousy and yet fearful rejection. Life would never be the same after the High Plains Banker stormed into town!

"Who are you??"

It was the one question no one dared ask him. After all, he was the Perfect Man, and what if he asked the same question of you, a lesser being? He pulled out his guitar, seducing them with songs of golden avarice and velvet ribs, fur-lined sinks and suicide sex on mountains of countless cash. "Baby, we were born to cum! Baby, we were born to fund!" In the end, no one really cared to ask him anything, they just knew his undeniable desires were their undeniable desires. To the High Plains Banker they could refuse no request - for his was a taking life worshiped from high to low.

Yes, the High Plains Banker wore his sunglasses a night - he saw the townspeople too well already. He himself had once been poor, working in a faceless fish factory with eyeless money guards and crippling crimes of the heart descended from a town who loved their god with all their heart and all their mind and all their soul. When they spoke, the blood of Jesus dripped from their tongues as they propagated His love for their misspent vanities. But this fisherman of souls claimed his worldly worth: a dreamer among zombies, a snapper of men's chains to kill the jackbooted joys of society's saboteurs.

Towering words of truth of the fisherman binded them with the light - and these ties they carelessly cut. Into the streets he was thrown, to proselytize to the dogs and cats and rats, for no human had ears. Wandering warlords of the street in fruitless hopes of ill-gotten glory and power-laden puke, chased him down every blind alley. "Pretty, pretty people we be!" Passing by in stolen Mercedes, believers of blight whipped the fisherman with god's own poverty, cackling as his speaking teeth dropped out and his healing heart dreamed ever fewer beats.

And for the fisherman's honor, no soul came walking in to hold the line. A Doubtless Decree was issued as Holy Law, giving its perpetrators godly goose bumps: "His is a death that must be, forever be and only be, so help us, god." For all of this time and any times after, this Holy Oath shall give a god's blessing of goodness. The last sounds of the fisherman were drowned by the victory clinks of crystal glassware and greed gone wild.

Until now...

Eyes on the prize?

The Banker's vengeful eyes sparkled in champagne reflections, weaving wealthy woe with plans to steal from the poor and give to the rich. Men of proud paper found erotic ecstasy in such rapacious wrath. "After all, unprized peasants would rip our horny plenty if they could!" And of those of worthless work, the Banker religioned a credo of savored slavery sold as salvation, an honest day's work for a dishonest pat on the hollowed head. "Oooh, you make greedy fun!" squealed the piggly classless. Puffing on a succumbing cigar, the High Plains Banker blew sarcastic smoke on their spellbound sins. "To hell's home for all!" And the hearing ears grew nearer.

Vampires of the day they'd be - for not even the exposing daylight can kill such wonderful wickedness! Hateful howls are the word as the knifing knives shear the sheep but who can hear when so powerfully possessed? "Save my life I'm going down for the last time!" - but not even its victims dare refute the universal love for the Doubtless Decree, from which all goodness flows. In guilt's guidance, fleeing sheep line up for the hangman's noose hoping fiduciary fidelity prove them worthy in the Banker's eyes. The Banker laughing spreads his wings, "There's no answer but my answer! There's no voice but my voice! There's no dream but my dream!"

Fanned by fault-finding fiends, the Banker hangs the relished relic of a dangling dollar over the side of a hard-hearted cliff. Seeing this, the comely cattle dive off head first hoping to grab electric boots and mohair suits. Even as death became them, the puzzled participants wondered how the drifting Banker held such a godly grip on their silent souls - serving the Banker even unto defeated death. "What are words for when no one listens at all?" Only during the certainty of the fateful fall of folly does telling truth will out: the banker's ways are a deliverance to doom, an illusion of life. Giving up on the demands of good dreams that must be dreamed, the "pretty, pretty people" design their own demise.