Casino Sin

Yes, significant other, I know you wanted that
birthday present more than anything, and please
know that I intended to buy it, but the one-armed
bandit held me up--it did.  Oh my love, it did indeed,
just as a highwayman loots the weary traveler, just
as the thief filches even the hope of the indigent,
just as the buzzards peck bits of flesh from the
dying.  Ah, the effrontery of said rouge to sin
so, to drain me of coin until I nearly begged
for mercy, until I was shivering and hungry,
until I was without shoes--a broken man,
red-faced and nonplussed for having
emptied pockets, at having turned
myself inside-out until my heart
warmed cool air, and my veins
throbbed amid the glitter of
necklaces, diamond rings,
and Rolexes.

Your desire is my desire.
Still, I am addiction’s prey,
a ransacked waif pleading for
an all-points-bulletin for a bandit
missing an arm, a soulless con making
fragments of the up and up, like me (such
a good-hearted sap), someone who only longed
to beacon his significant other with her ultimate gift
on her birthday.  There is no honor, my love, in such
fast and unfelt purloining, and no virtue in the slicing
of a human being by the scythe of greed.  Pity me,
my love, as I bleed both red and tears due to this
misappropriation of right, by this fallen extortion
imposed by some hard and freakish privateer. 
The sin of silver, and gold was watching.


33 Lines
Writer’s Cramp Winner
2-15-16