“oh, how they will all bet on morrows that strain rills after dark,
and yet the Game, unpitying, regains its lordly behest at dawn;

lean back and feel the turn of things, the chance, the risk, the almost...
ante!”

⋮

this mania!
when it wreathes,
the imperceptible of myself,
it drains through me, sedulously,
hands aquiver, sight fretful,
and the bath of wanting (and not, ergo),
spewing and fusing
inside the etna of my inlying.

you are, then, obedience itself,
long before the grapevine,
before the Cards;
rails tarnishing, yet begrimed steel,
rather ossein, or thew,
turning to a suttee so pale, it forgets its ills.

and the trains;
yes, they were gushing, though not afore;
“did you think they would arrive for you?”
they smelt into clag,
into a mist of faces, barren,
swelling and shrieking of throe,
snaking, snaking down the spine of
the Stake.

slaves betting with their ilk of ardor,
when a match struck, belatedly,
but already it is leaning toward cinders,
its shine no more
than a laugh of people,
leaving the hall shivery in its bleat,
charcoals sighing their waning,
others honing their exit.
bitterly, bitterly, i am
left with nothing to hold but smoke.

but time, ah, time,
the nimble Host,
old trickster with his cuffs of lithe,
shuffling cloaks for loose change.
he and i,
always at the same table,
and i know his favorite sleight:
to grant the boastful player
a losing hand,
and winning eyes.

the coin is tossed,
to the Parlay; so soon cast,
so soon swallowed by the piker.
the crowd, they clap for a name,
but it is never genius they are crowning,
only luck,
foremost Dealer,
with that last word,
smiling as he lays it down:
only the blind Card turned upward.

~~~

and i,
sitting with my empty cup,
still growing a taste for losing
foolish, surely,
but the loss only deepens the greed,
doubles it, whets it past the reach of will.

so ring then, coin,
dull as you are, tattered,
clattering against the floorboards.
it tells me i am counted,
measured,
already spent.
yes, yes, it is only a caprice,
but it hews, it digs,
it laughs where no mouths are,
and i laugh back;
ante!

loathsome murk, drawing me into taint,
trailing off into the black mire yet again.
vine-brother, i hear your leaves trembling,
what poison seeps from you now?
clotted earth webs your lashes;
when i scrape it loose, the ground cracks,
your breath curdles me backward,
into the ditch’s gullet.

hands like tarnished winches,
i wrench, stagger, cling,
yet your seepage slicks the corbelling,
brine of iron thickening in the throat.

i thrash like a rabid,
limbs cadging against sodden turf,
nails serrated on the gristle-clotted earth,
and still you scream,

your wither drips sicklier now,
i see it contort, i see the murids writhe
through the filigree of air.
crows; oscillating, tacit, assay my hands,
perpetually assay, quantifying
how fealty decays in my fingers.
falter not, the fault feeds me yet, they caw.

vine-brother jumps into the cracked loam,
hell opening like funeral pyres beneath him.
he sags, sap-wet and ***** with earth’s grit,
tears mingling with the dust as they leak from his cracked lips.
his hand, crawler’s cold, scrabbles for mine;
i, slack-jointed, pulled into the churn of mire,
find myself dragged into loathsome murk.