Wednesday, 7 October 2020

A Poem a Day (272): Dead-eyed poker

 
Dead-eyed poker
 
A recognition in the sub-queue,
one waiting without the recoil,
an angry pointer of a lone hunter.
 
Wretched. It’s the tool of the shade
and he keeps it close, bed companion.
These days grow wild, a lurid dance.
 
They say the end is nigh, a reckoning,
shattered skies a sign of days to come.
He can’t make it out, spinning cards
 
in cigar smoke spirals, yellowed stubs.
It’s the girl in red who shouts out first.
To the shadows caught doves crowd.
 
The first blood spilled won’t be his own,
but it’s due. He can taste it, dry as
the caked dust dead on the windowsills.
 
Black fog rolls in on the back of the tide,
spoils of an unforgiving cursed mind,
carries the spectres inside, buried, back.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, October 7, 2020

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