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[amphetamine5000.livejournal.com]

Strip Poker: A Parable

There's only you and the dealer.
Already naked, she has nothing
more to lose
You're playing
by her rules with her deck.
She knows you're watching her
more closely than the cards.
She stands there like a model,
letting you distract yourself
until you're down to socks
and underwear.
You tell yourself
her brows and breasts are less
than perfect, but the sweet scent
of her lips and the musk from her hips
are unignorable.
You bet
both socks and lose to a royal
straight flush.
Since quitting
is prohibited, you go for broke
and see your triple sevens
fade before her triple jacks.
Without your underwear, you feel
much smaller than you are.
"Relax," she says, "we all
look truer, nude."
You say
you never thought you'd hear
that said by anyone so beautiful
and, if she'd excuse the word, exposed.
She says, "You had no way
of knowing, and, besides, what
difference does it make?
All
those who play this game
end bare as they began
and everybody plays.
How long
you play is in the cards.
Some lose at first, some later
and some finally, but everybody
loses."
Another player waits
for her to deal.
He's wearing
double-trousers, double-neckties,
double-everything.
She knows
defenses when she sees them,
but she deals regardless.
Each card comes snapping
off her fingers with a click.
After he's down to skin,
the second player asks,
"Is this game fixed?"
"Not fixed,"
she says, "but totally predictable.
Nobody beats the house, and I'm
the house.
I keep on winning
just to prove to you
that losing everything's not
everything.
You always end
with what you had in the beginning."

--Sam Hazo

Comments

[mysneaker.livejournal.com]

hmm i like this poem.
haven't read anything by hazo in awhile,
but maybe he's worth a second look