Ellie's sailing down the river
Tessa's sitting by the lake
Four of us going separate ways on a hot summer day

Phil's driving up the mountains
Looking for a classic thrill coupled with a few spills
Four of us on our own adventures on a hot summer day

You play three.
Me, seven.
Fifteen for two.
This is where I lose you.
Your phone vibrates,
You leviate
Sitting across from me,
Making me an unwilling audience
To all the drama.
You vibrate. Your shoulders droop
Like the gape-toothed village idiot.
You gesticulate,
Fading in and out
In a semi-conscious awakening.
You're trembling under stones
Sitting on your chest.
It shows in your tembling hands.
Twenty, for two...
Twenty-five, for six...
I overhear your child is truant,
Another wants a ride,
Another a car, doctor or lawyer.
You're shuffling in your seat.
Not to worry.
Affter the stones are lifted,
And you're properly pegged
In the stink hole, the game's over.
Thirty, for twelve and a go. Game.
So deal with it.

I love you like an ace of hearts
A card as unpredictable as any other
The highest ranking or the lowest, depending on what sort of game you choose to play
I'd choose to play blackjack, and always make you worth 11 points, even if it put me over twenty-one
Because I want to prove your worth to you, even if it costs me a game or two
And I wouldn't play with just any deck
Oh no, I'd always play with the deck full of the cards you know and love
Some of these cards may become old and torn and stained, and may need to be replaced when they've run their course
But that ace of hearts will always remain, no matter how many battles it has seen
Eventually people will realize that the oldest card is your ace of hearts, but that will matter not
Because that card will stand the test of time, and remain there forevermore

"Play your cards right."

If only you'd stop shuffling them.

Wake up to the pounding in your head,
Whiskey and regrets make for a mean hangover.
Three Advil's, a smoothie and 45 minutes throwing weights won't fix the evil inside,
But it will allow for yet one more day,
Of this sad blemish you call life.

Suited up, don't you look nice?
You hide your weakening smile behind your Starbucks tall half sweet nonfat double shot wake the **** up latte.
Strut your stuff,
Male model martini,
Sell another lie,
Buy yourself time,
Swipe another credit card.

Don't look that homeless vagabond in the eye,
Lest you see the need there,
And feel your own, answer in kind.
Rather make a crass remark,
Throw the keys for your overpriced sports utility vehicle to the valet,
And ***** about the mayor cleaning up the streets.
You pay your taxes,
You give to charity,
You've done your part to end world poverty,
These little lines go through your soul as fast as the ******* you've snorted,
But with less effect.

Your empty voice barks all the louder to be heard,
It joins the chorus of the lost as you sidle up to the bar.
You know the keeper, you tip him so that he greets you by name,
All so you can impress the charade around you,
Master of ceremonies for a freak show that not one of you,
The cast,
Can truly see.

Now you wake beside a beautiful stranger.
Rip off her skin and peer within
The ugly you see is the demon you share,
Drown it's harpy song with more devil water,
Pierce your skin and let it ride the needle ***** high beside you,
Into your own special hell.

Fill your heart, fill it as full as you can.
Fill it with memories most warmly hued
and remember them well
in all their glorious, sweaty,
kindly brutal
minutiae.

Remember each drop,
each bite,
each individual dust
mote dancing
the still, hot, sunlit
February
Thursday.
Remember how different
places all have their own
unique elusive
smell and how
it is impossible to describe this to anyone
who has never lived
anywhere else.

Fill your heart with all those memories
of the best kind
of home grown hell.

Fill it until its tears are forced out.
Fill it against the long, cold dark of parking lost.
Fill it against mysterious hate.
Fill it against misery and mud and hard
frozen
bottle
glass
lies.

Fill it so full it can't ever sink far down.
Burden it with buoyant stories
and weigh it with
hypnotic winter flame.
These are the things of which
the cold terror to
victory apocalyptic will be born.
There are no second prizes here.

Fill it with the certainty of the worn places
where the chairs met
the table
each night.

Fill it with the truth of
the gnarled and sun-warm roots and
the indisputability of a Beetle motor accelerating and
the violent pirouette of each spring
and the ozone smell and
the way wet wood screams at the sky and
the way the sound
hits all ears the same
regardless of
their color or
what side of Line Avenue they’re from.

Remember what line you’re from
and to hell with the rest.
You must mind your own.
There’ll be water
if God wills it.

You are never too far lost if you still know
your father’s face and can still remember
getting milk from the tubes
in the
silver metal cooler
and the red cookie jar
lid as the
adults smoked at the green kids’ table
and everyone mostly had blue eyes
and red hair and there was always a phantom killer
lurking  
right beyond the only hope door
before you were ****** into the mirror
world and
*******, but
kids sure do have to make some
rough choices
before nine o’clock.

Keep remembering and when you remember,
remember even deeper
remember in yet greater detail and
practice that remembering until
you
ARE
the dust motes
the milk tube
Thursday
roots
sun
until you ARE each drop of sweat
until you ARE the phantom killer
and the red cookie jar lid
the straight line of smoke rising out
of the ashtray and
the motor and the
scream and the
ears and
you ARE all these things
and you ARE
and you can’t really say where these things begin or where
you end because you’re not sure that
anything really does end or
begin
anymore.

Beginnings and endings
haven’t much meaning after
everyone has
shown their cards and the worn places on the chairs have
met the table
one
last
time.

Wish me luck - like a speech for me to read before I play. I am going to print it out and keep it with me., when I am at the final table, and it's televised, right before I win. The last hand, before I make the call of a lifetime - clock ticking, $35k first place prize money; I am going to take it out, look at it. Then call, Like a Boss. Black tinted classes, headphones looking like speakers, Yankees cap tipped to the side, Charles dickens on my lap. Sipping on some water shipped in from Vergeze. Cool as an icecube, rocking a tight Tee. Blue jeans, tim boots, Blasting ice -Tea; dudes ain't worried about cards, until the check me. I'm nice with calls, I'm like Jordan when he first started wearing the two-three. Sticking my tongue out at dudes that try and bluff me; the lack luster in comparison to me. I'm seeing their tells, like sign language. They try and force my hand, I do maximum carnage. My shine don't tarnish.

Sleep.
Sleep child,
til' the light overpowers the darkness inside,
where I secretly cried.
I secretly tried,
but no one would guess,
and I never put my cards face up.
It's only ketchup.
Used to patch up,
the cut and scratch ups,
caused by the dull
of my pencil,
and my soul.
I fell,
but I dragged myself up again,
back into my daily skin,
and I'm that burden.
That one whose not fully there,
told by everyone, "you just don't care",
with a random shudder scare.
The words I despise you all think,
even the shrink,
and it drowns me to the sink.
I'm that disaster,
everyone's after,
maniacal laughter.
"Am I losing my mind?"
"Is this mind really mine?"
"Would dying be fine?"
I'm not so refined :)
I can see the things in perfect imagery,
things I don't want to see,
always worried everyone hates me.
I can't see,
I'm not me,
I'm not even a somebody.
Maybe inside is some other ghost,
I'm the host,
at my death let's just have a toast.
Til' death do we part,
take it as a new start,
buy the roses to my grave from walmart.
I didn't think I mattered anyways,
sleeping through these pass-me-by days,
my mind playing simon says.
I always secretly try,
but I am still I,
and now simon says ".....goodbye."