When I was small
I wrote a song.
It was as wild
As it was long.

I did not know
How to write words
And so I sang
With the morning birds.

Now I am grown,
I am depressed.
I write long things
Just to impress.

I do not sing,
I only sigh.
When I was small
I was alive.

She passed out
between the Game Makers
At
The Rancheria's casino
I was playing Bonus Deuces Wild
She was playing a penny a line

Hitting five of a kind on the first play in the continuum
She acknowledged my luck
Then lay her head down between the machines
as if looking for something
She could not find

Time passed
Banging along
Credits up and credits down
I asked her if she needed help
She was comatose
Remembered it far later
Her bottom gum was pink,
Where her teeth
Should have been

We laid her down
I held her head
I forgot 17 years of CPR training
I remembered it later

Her breath would stop
Then sputter back to life
Life trying to find away

Help arrived after a while
Disorganized for a while
and ill prepared
for an establishment frequented with old people and another addict
They
worked hard at it
got the hang of it
brought her back to life several times

It didn't matter
Emily dressed in black leotards
Balancing a drink tray
told me about her a while later
She had been alone
grieving,
an anyuerism
She died.

My CPR
wouldn't have mattered

But before I left that afternoon
I told Security
I didn't mean to be crass or crude
Or
sacrilegious.

But could he please push the button
To get my ticket
I had money in that machine

He said to me
I guess we're all lucky today

I know what he means
heading out the doors
To the sun and the winds.

Have you ever had a Dusty Baker year?
We're talking baseball for a moment here.

Went from .320
To .230
Forty homeruns to three

Every decision made was the wrong one
Every one you should of made
You never did.

Reoccurring themes pop up
Like fireworks on a low cloud night sky
Your dancing on fire
Burning up inside

It was all so right for a while

Now out of the groove
Out of the zone
It all feels so wrong
A Dusty Baker year if I ever saw one

They all kind of end in the end
But every time
You leave that man on third
When you coulda sworn that curve ball
Was going to be outside

It makes you wonder
If it's going to begin again
Now.