Gambling Problem

Gambling Problem

“Now Josh,” the words dripped

from her lips like priests hands

and paschal lambs. “If you gamble,

you will never

win.”

But there was a one way

freeway, right to left,

through my cerebellum

and my ears’ bongos

barely caught the rhythm

over the honking horns of

rush-hour traffic.

This was the ultimate Gameboy.

One glowing quarter can collect

a jackpot in one lever’s lazy yank.

One wily Washington could make a kid

a millionaire.

“I’ll show you.”

and out she pulled

the finest portrait

of a president I’d ever

curled my 9 year old hopes around.

Her sermon filled the casino

as she dusted the quarter on

her blouse and slid it into

the nearest machine, pulling

back the golden lever,

and won a hundred dollars.

The unintended quarter she slipped into

my mind that night, took a while

to sink to my heart. My lever

is still miles from being fully pulled,

but the pulley of paradigm

snagged my backbone and is slowly

dragging me to the slick ski-slopes  

of risk.

I threw a quarter in speech,

hit the jackpot on poetry,

a coach showing me the Whitman

ground into my bootsoles.

I put a quarter in climbing,

a quarter in cliff diving

and blew my paycheck on a love,

odds 1000, to 1.

I dove between the jagged rocks of risk

from 55 foot, teetering cliffs

and flailed a little in the waters of experience.

I held my breath, avoiding the second hand smoke

of others’ exhausted wisdom, and made a beeline

for the roulette wheel.

I put twenty on hope, fifty on fight,

and 150 on untapped passion, trapped behind

a dam of can’t.

I opened the floodgates,

went all in on can.

Too many dreamers throw

too many quarters down

wishing, window, and oh wells,

hiding between excuses of

odds and probability,

but pull the lever on life.

Win the jackpot on work,

and its sweet smelling

sermon of sweat,

and risky serendipity.