Poem - Soon on Cordite - Warning to the Gambler

After a long hiatus and many rejections, I can finally add my second publication for 2012 to my list. Warning to the Gambler will appear in Cordite Poetry Review - Jackpot issue #39. Here's a PREVIEW. Check out the PUBLICATION of my poem at Cordite Poetry Review Editor: Samuel Wagan Watson.

Warning to the Gambler

The way in is through thick double doors, between foyered palms, past

elderly stewards kneading hands. Fifty-dollar notes are exchanged for

happy-go-lucky seats, silver-dint-bar-tinkling machines. They lay down

their cards, sit hunched into their rib cage; sink into a consciousness of

play and battle.

In this warning to the gambler, one sees imprisonment and little daylight.

How many gamblers have been trapped in aisled rooms littered

with cigarette ash, zoo noises, furniture oozing years of spilled gin?

How many gamblers have watched two Kings scarper into a barrel turn?

How many have seen the chips scuttle before a fall, that fraction

before a missed fortune?

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Poem for the Day - Catastrophe - a storm poem

Catastrophe

We await the path of the storm

Thunder barks overhead like the dog

Next door. She’s up, wailing her grief

When no-one’s home

The evening groans on

Without lights, the kettle’s usurped for the gas’s

Slow metabolic rate

We don’t recognize the path of this cyclone

Never having one this far

Sporadic winds whip and the neighbour’s

Fence is no longer a division

The roads are physical coatings of debris

What turns up when the roof’s gone

How do I know such things?

Knowing is going back in time

To a transistor radio, a bite-size beginning

Shedding those hi-tech conventions

Rain enters like a stormtrooper and alarms

Flick on/ off, clocks tick, but time is soon forgotten

It’s enough to know that a hot cocoa by candlelight

Will herald a woeful sleep

Waiting for the green party lights to blaze

All electrics on

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