To the gamblers...

EvilToasterElfEvilToasterElf Posts: 1,119
edited January 2004 in Poetry, Prose, Music & Art
Hold ‘Em

We start with two cards
face down,
unknown to the others,
misty as the opening couplet
of Shakespearian sonnets.
Sitting like anvils on the table,
lurking monsters in my childhood
closet

Then a single card is discarded
from the deck,
burned,
before three more cards come flush
face up in the middle of the table,
the flop

two players,
already distraught,
toss in their cards,
like dog tags
ripped from fresh POW’s.
They wait now
to see who will take their antes
and opening bets.
The chips that are and aren’t money,
those who have lost do not waiver,
they raise their drinks and wait
to see if they can pick up someone
else’s bluff.
They search for beads of sweat, and darting eyes,
who is babbling and who is silent
But when money is involved
people are Picassos.

Another card is burned, smoldering
in cigar smoke before the 4th card hits
the middle of the table
“Dude the girl was amazing,
she did things to me
that Maxim can’t even print!”
He hasn’t stopped talking
since the flop,
he’s bluffing I thought.
He’s smiling too much
and this bullshit monologue is laughable.

“I’ll call,”
I said with my weighted gaze
sinking straight into the green felt of the table.
The chips piled
in the center of that field,
red and blue and black,
each one the blinking eye of Andrew Jackson
laughing from the front of a 20.

Another card is burned,
and the fifth card carries us all along
this last card is called, “the river.”
And we wade through it, measuring our chips
against the blue Hoyle background on our
two card hand, a pattern of circles weaving in and
out of each other, like the mathematic
probabilities floating in smoky circles
from the shaft of my Macanudo

His eyes rolled derelict
in his sockets
between the cards on the table,
my eyes,
and the accumulated mass churning in the foam
of the river.
Blue eyes are ominous in poker,
they have a genuine cunning that darker colors
can’t quite match.
Satisfaction and desperation flicker like
clouds
torn apart,
anything can be hidden or emphasized
shuffled like inaudible sighs

He finally gets up the nerve to bet
five dollars.
I raise him 10, and looking at a queen and king
on the table, he has little choice.
He smiles and folds, showing me his pair of 4’s
I return my own cigar stained teeth,
“Good thing you folded,”
I don’t show him, my King high hand.
We have plenty of poker to play,
before the night’s up.
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • anOmisanOmis Posts: 223
    Interesting style, something new on this board, feels good
    ~~dont mind yer make up, just make up yer mind~~

    ~~its better to be hated for who you are than be loved for who you are not~~

    F.ZAPPA
  • Some cards don't have anything to do with the rest of the pack, gambling or games.
  • justamjustam Posts: 21,410
    :)
    &&&&&&&&&&&&&&
  • BhagavadGitaBhagavadGita Posts: 1,748
    "you guys playing cards?"
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