"keno" poems
Helicopter seeds descending from tree houses
and
resting in ponds shadowed by shaken needles;
—I awoke from a dream this morning—
Forests in fiery oranges plagued by pine beetles
and
a man fishing in the dusk, a sole fish he arouses.
—such a dreamin' I had me—
How about them men in the mountains, hermit'd, high, isolated,
and
pensive with pens in ink, draftin' a'lookin' after their suicide notes:
—it was nonsensical, such nonsense—
I can feel my bones aching,
my finger bones aching.
Don't you apologize, fish, for biting bait
lest the others hear that I commiserate
amongst the fishes in the lake water:
"She could have a mother; she could be a daughter!"
I feel that boom; I know that boom:
That's Thunder's yellow rumble a'stumblin'
'cross the oak-wood floors of my room–
That's naked, **** clothes strip'd.
A pile and a bundle,
my bones are aching.
That's a candle left burning,
that's saints speaking in tongues,
that's men hung like curtains on rungs–
This world is getting old, times are a'turning.
That's a taxi cab afterlife, a mail-order wife,
that's pills on the floor of a Motel 6 in Reno,
that's forty-four hundred lost playing keno.
We can't always be lucky, who calls that a life?
My joints are a'sprainin' aching
with the preempt of a storm.
That's writer's block and cramped hands, cramped hearts,
that's a hovel heated by an oven, heads found in hot ovens,
that's the hillside and the glens past where the track bends but
just before the dens of monsters that I swear I left behind that night.
—dreamin' a'dazin' and days in always let my demons out—
That night I hid another razor in the rafters thinking,
"My thoughts I'll bury."
I ran away to sell maps of the human heart en Algérie.
Dec 9, 2013
Dec 9, 2013 at 12:50 AM UTC
Empty my heart and my soul dear Lord
For I know that no one is Great in your eyes without being a humble servent to thy name, Greatness in the eyes of Man is Worthless compared to the eternal life we can have in the eyes of The Lord.... Going to church for 30yrs means nothing without the dedication of being a Servant to GOD first & sec. We all ways put put egos 1st which ultimately become our demise N 1 way or another... Being a Servant is more than the term itself its a commitment to give thanks and appreciation...
Aug 10, 2014
Aug 10, 2014 at 8:49 PM UTC
Assiduous aster couple
Defendant's of moral code,
Picking plenty of garden truffel's
Elation of electrology gonidium grove
Flex branches
Flexed to granial proportion,
Mad hatter like parkway's
No psychedelic distortion
All is real here
Tis the Jasmine's are kept in Jardiniere's
Kaddish shalt be spoken in different language
Blessed holy every seven years
No keno like chances
All is predetermined fate,
Candles on ourn table
Lap-robes to fit ourn date
A dame to all remission
Whilst Damiana to lax ourn sense
Chocolate bag's of smothered kisses
Ourn bodies to eachother to taste as mints
We shalt leave the world on doorstep
Coronet's upon ourn domes
Coroniform shapely spirit's
Corposants of ourn own ghost
Correlation of childer childe
Chimeres to glaze ourn agile
Fragile as pottery
Ourn story is painted upon!!!!
Jun 5, 2015
Jun 5, 2015 at 11:57 AM UTC
My life is a hand of poker played in a crooked casino,
Losing at every turn, this cancer beating my chemo,
These syringes take me higher than crack and a cappuccino,
I will end up in a box dressed up with a tie and khakis or chinos,
I've come back down, parachuted from being so broke, God has my soul out for repo,
When I turn around I want to make my entrance grandly incognito,
This battle is Lost, my blood drawn out by racist mosquitoes,
Now I get up seeking revenge for my peoples,
No one around me departs after using those needles,
For once in my life, my actions are right not illegal,
I won't depend on the gamble of the lawyer and his paralegal,
I circle around back to this social casino,
I wasn't strong to beat this depression, and therapy was my chemo,
This is my relapse from being alone and my life played out as a silly game of keno.
Mar 10, 2016
Mar 10, 2016 at 8:55 PM UTC
The stars didn’t align like how I thought they would.
I used to sit on my stoop late at night
Gazing up at the stars and begging for the universe to take me.
Fill my lungs with stardust instead and let me go to the home
My heart never ceased aching for.
I equated their twinkling to laughter,
I imagined them trading bets on how long they could wait
Until I took matters into my own hands.
How many times I would fail until one of them took pity on me.
Shooting stars like shooting dice and passing satellites
Like the scrolling KENO screen at the celestial casino.
I shouldn’t have survived those nights.
I was their underdog racehorse beating the odds again and again and again.
I felt the universe looking down gently upon me,
Pulling out an ancient coin in their heavenly hands
To finally flip and decide once and for all if I shall stay or go.
And as the coin flipped, my world imploded.
Wrapped in a cosmic blanket I stood face to face with the sun.
Bright, warm rays enveloped me, a light more beautiful than I’d ever known before.
He said to me “it hurts to become” and I knew what he meant but
I wanted to be as powerful, proud, and warm as him.
The coin landed.
And courageously,
I became.
Apr 15, 2025
Apr 15, 2025 at 1:07 AM UTC
Keno Baby
By Joeysguy
My wife and I liked to play keno
Just about every weekend we would go
She was pregnant and due any day
Over an hour’s ride each way
Other players would say
Your going to give birth today
We got home and went to bed
It’s that time my wife had said
Her water broke on the floor
Our first was born in nineteen sixty four
It was almost a maybe
That we had a keno baby
Aug 9, 2014
Aug 9, 2014 at 9:32 AM UTC