The golden rule never gives change.
And gamblers only drink champagne
Losers can’t afford it
Don’t play poker with medicine men
Doc Holliday's a sore loser
It goes with his obsession
He's a dentist by learning
A gambler by profession
An' a renaissance assassin
A Medici Faustian bargain
Playing the green baize table
Where ten’s the changing sign
The alchemist’s calling card
The card of transformation
A card of changing of beds
And a change of friends
They could even be enemies
Fortune changes for the worse
An’ losing is a winning gamble
When hands like feet change direction
Losing yourself is the smart play
Sooner’s so much better than later
In time the world loves a loser
But gamblers hate a debtor
I.O U’s don’t spell for less than A an’ E
They’re just vowels without provenance
Gambling cashes in on culture
Money is the 'lingua franca'
Of a very deadly silent economy
No really one talks about it
An’ you can’t keep your eyes off it
But sure as hell everyone
Listens to the silence
Ten’s the calling card of consequence
A very suitable number
In Fire Earth Air and Water
They can be quite soulfully pedestrian
You never know what’s in the elements
A good card to keep up your sleeve
But lose your shirt you lose everything
An’ it goes without saying a lot
Not a good card to be found naked with
Be careful with a nine in any colour
It’s the most deserving in the highest
Nines, sleeves and gambling
Are a triple tray of troubles
Heads have been known to be served
On a tray of trays
Nines can be very Trinitarian
And quite John the Baptist
A good card to lose in haste
But eternal if a friend,
There’s none better
Eights go on forever
The Via Dolorosa of numbers
They are a sacred journey
Only the compassionately beautiful
Gamble with an eight in their hands
Eight is a sacred mystery
In any suit it is never cut
And always woven
From a seamless gambled-for cloth
Eight never gambles in suits
Only in garments
Never gamble with an eight
Unless you’re gambling with redemption
Hand life and soul have been
Eternally lost or found on an eight
Truly a gamblers card
And sometimes a calling card
As every gambler knows
A card of consequence and karma
When it calls keep your eyes on the dealer
Sure as hell a deal's been done
An’ all the blue eyes are on you
Sevens like fives are a journey
Good cards for travellers
Wanderers and shape shifters
Seven seas and five continents
Suits those wandering souls among us
Two solitary prime numbers
Indivisible onto themselves
They can be quite pedestrian
Fives can be over confident over land
But they shouldn't try to be seven
Walking on water's a mistake
Unless you’re an avatar
Treading wine is better and safer
Fives and sevens are a journey
Good cards to keep in your shoes
Sixes are sixes by themselves
An’ they don’t go with sevens
They're the card of reflection
A scriptural card if ever there was one
A card dressed in a triple mirror
Vanity and vexation in the curves
A card to turn and turn
And turn your eyes again
The number of this card
Another Trinitarian consequence
Is reflected in the mirror
An image of ourselves
The card has an identity problem
Don’t knock it, you might need it
It’s your friend in need of friend
An’ with friends like that
It's just as well that any three
From any four sixes
Is the sign of a winning hand
In a loser’s smile
And the best part of a full house
A card of Jezebels, angels
And mirrors, on reflection
Don’t you just love sixes
Five is five and let’s not talk about it
It’s an assassin’s calling card
It goes with its own territory
A card that doesn’t take prisoners
Fours are strangers at the door
Every one with a Matthew birth mark
In the image of John
Like four seasons they arrive
Like pilgrims then are gone
To change themselves to be
The same again, another season
Another fall of leaving calls
A card for all weathers
And shelter in a storm
You are kind of pleased to see it
But you don’t know why
Also cards of mystery and obviousness
And only fools an’ fours
Can tell the difference
It’s the ‘maybe’ card
You never really know with fours
The proverbial knocking at your doors
But sure as hell
They’ll never ring a bell
A tidy card to send to acrobats
And other kinds of well-balanced people
That’s what fours are for
Commitments tailored to your needs
And the occasional highly wired friend
Don’t go out without them
You never know if you might need them
Threes are trinities and divinities
Fathers Sons an’ Holy Ghosts
And more usually the cause
Of a quick divorce
The world moves in threes
Sattwas Rajas and Tamas
The triune dance of the universe
Light, Action and Inertia
It even grows on trees
Every one’s a traveller
Some are even gypsies
A good card to keep in your shoes
They can be an invitation
Or a visitor from a distant place
They're the taxi cards of the pack
Call them when you wanna go
Somewhere, they'll arrive
They're the calling cards of falling friends
You'll never be lonely on journey
Of five and sevens with a three
They’re the crucifixion card
Unless it suits you otherwise
To be so amused
Deuces are twos, the mirror card
Duality’s their basic business
They really are a wolf card
Always travelling in packs
Not sufficient to be dangerous
An’ just enough to not be lonely
They really appreciate your company
It suits their reflective existence
To travel in togetherness
The faces are places searching for aces
Jacks in a pack never look back
If they can possibly look sideways
Concealing their knavish tendencies
They’re quite the well-tailored card
Fine raiment maketh a fool attractive
In very unfashionable circumstances
Treachery an’ deceit on each turning face
Sure as Clementine’s your long lost darling
An Ophelia never got her hand in time
A gambling Hamlet is a sight to see
Jealousy rage and a ferocious anger
Writ upon a countenance looking back
Beyond the cardboard eyes of the beholder
Dumb broads are never dumb
And seldom abroad
Sometimes they can be
A very home loving card
Two jokers live in every pack
One out front the other looks back
They’re the magpies in the deck
Less in sorrow than in joy
They cover every missing face
The hooded birds deserve their place
Their reputation precedes them
In black and white they are the night
In colours they’re magnificent sevens
And they’ve really got your number
In spades it suits their harlequin fashion
To be a veritable grave digging charmer
In jewels they ***** the precious deck
Two diamonds and they’re everybody’s
The vagrant royalty rules the roaming pack
Their world is another creature’s finery
Gamblers are such snazzy jazzy dressers
If you have to lose a shirt do it in style
Second hand clothes and second hand hands
Aren’t so much a misfortune more an affliction
Desperately seeking a lost occasion
Well-heeled fools engrave it on their heart
Better be dead in your gracious threads
Than kicking in rags of common comfort  
They’re the card that always looks back
The face in every hand smiling at you
Looking at them with cardboard eyes
Then there’s the precisely tailored box
The transient funeral parlour
In a good-looking box like that
You can die an’ dine anywhere
In reasonable style
If you’re tailed a toss head first
Into a losing situation
Cards never call they beckon
And if they speak it’s a good idea to listen.