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The Wanna

February 10, 2025
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Addictive personalities make plans/That are subject to constant revision. I, who am addicted/to casino gambling

And overeating, had originally planned/To spend an hour doing household chores/And then hoofing it to Carl’s Jr. for an only slightly unhealthy breakfast,/And then hopskipjumping to PIP Coffee & Clay,/There to work on my wheel-throwing technique, find myself/At a dive bar called the Hideaway Lounge Sportsbar & Grill, digesting/Eggs over easy, two sausage links,/sourdough toast, crispy hash browns,/And an Irish Coffee heavily laced/With Jameson’s Irish Whiskey and a special/Vanilla-enhanced version of Bailey’s Irish Cream.

I will leave after I have finished/The bottle of Budweiser I now ingest/And the ten ounces or so of chaser-water.

If I were an alcoholic, I would be on my way to big trouble today.

Praise be, Alcohol is not my nemesis, although/In my more horrific gambling misadventures,/Alcohol has certainly been an unindicted co-conspirator/Because it impairs judgment/And loosens inhibitions.

But the demonic imp with whom I wrestle,/The at-risk factor that will do me in if I let it,/The deadly Wanna that is my direst character flaw,/Is the glittery temptress, Mademoiselle Chance.

I have had twisted, ghastly sex with Her/An awful number of times/And with the deep consequences of loss and grief/In tragic disproportion/To the delights She offers.

I left Her standing at the altar of my undoing/About two and a half years ago.

I hope never to see Her again, even on my deathbed.

Still, even this minute, she whispers

Come see me.

I miss you.

belly interesting

July 31, 2024
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time was when my belly did not throw

a shadow

and wasn’t out warping the woof of my pants.

but sure as my hero is sweet rā

chel maddow

the shelf of my undergut looks me askance.

the trouble is that food is just meant to

be eaten

and I have forsaken such vices as gambling

so i have what’s fit for a glutton

to sweeten

my near-term desirings as through life

I’m shambling.

**

Afterword: I’ve racked up more than two years of compulsive-gambling sobriety, and I don’t smoke and rarely drink and don’t use any recreational drugs, but lately my eating habits have gotten excessive, which for a diabetic is at its very least mildly self-destructive. At the same time, though, it is hugely enjoyable, so there’s a quality-of-life struggle going on, complete with the creeping guilt that compels me to mutter “You Belly-Worshipper, you” as I waddle away from an all-you-can-eat buffet. So this blog post is my way of naming the beast that I hope to defeat.

chickens

January 9, 2023
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chickens
to Susan Vespoli

there is a place to stroll in my neighborhood
that i think of as the Chicken District
simply because chickens abound
and stroll like i do. once

a lady was leading a troupe of chicks
to safety off the asphalt of Earll Drive
and i called from down the street
“aha! NOW i know why
The Chicken Crossed The Road!” and she laughed
and declared herself the Crazy Chicken Lady.

today was another saunter in the District
but then in a group of four
i saw a specimen with some feathers
that were the strawberry blonde
described by my poet friend Susan V
in her heartstopping poem “Chicken”
that was really about her son
and the processing of her anxiety and grief
about him–
a golden hen magically appeared
and then disappeared
but the reader must decide
if the bird was real
or manifested by a grieving mother
to step down the high voltage
of her helplessness
in watching her son’s life
take its
tragic
turns.

when i saw that strawberry blonde
my friend and her poem magically popped
into my suddenly unlulled thoughts
and it became not a coincidence
but a needed component of life on earth
that Tragic
and Magic
rhyme.

chickens
cross roads
lay eggs
become fricasseed
pick out dough in breadpans
peck and scratch and look askance
and reveal glory and downfall
and the bond
that shared grief
creates.

Afterword: Susan’s poem “Chicken” may be found in her outstanding collection Blame It on the Serpent, available via Amazon.

Inktober 2022, day 25: Tempting

October 25, 2022
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Today’s prompt is “Tempting.” Tempting to me implies that the activity of allure is something we are supposed to avoid. So I loaded an index card with artifacts of gambling, alcoholism, satisfaction of raw lust, hard drug addiction, and violence. It was only after I’d finished the image that it occurred to me that the word Tempting is of eight letters that divide in have to a nifty shorthand DEFINITION of Temptation: Temp (temporary) Ting (tingle). The acrostic poem follows, as minimalist as I could make it and still qualify as a poem. (Note: the four words Testament, Ennui, Meditation, and Playacting would comprise a more minimalist solution, but the mental gymnastics involved in justifying their relevance to “Tempting” would throw my psychic back out, so I backed out of the route.

Temp Ting: Tomorrow we’ll be penitent•Engulfed in guilt/ennui•Must focus on the NOW not then•Please say OMFG.

cork quest

May 1, 2016
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cantileverage with p & q

obfuscates the devil & his due

risking on one turn of pitch & toss

kidnaps will to chance & all is lost

image

This poem has as its touchstone Rudyard Kipling’s lines from “IF–,” “If you can make one heap of all your winnings/And risk it on one turn of pitch and toss/And lose, and start again at your beginnings/And never breathe a word about your loss . . .” The whole thrust (implication intentional) of “IF–” is man-to-manly-man advice on how to conduct oneself. I committed the poem to memory more than twenty years ago, thinking it great. Today I think certain lines are keepers (“If you can dream, and not make dreams your master/If you can think, and not make thoughts your aim . . .”), yet other lines, such as the one my poem is based on, are problematic.

Is it a good and manly thing to risk all your winnings on one chancy outcome? Was it a good idea to acquire those winnings on chancy outcomes? Speaking as someone with a gambling addiction, for me the answer is No to both.

Just last week I felt myself at risk. I had a little extra money, and I heard Casino Arizona call my name. And an insidious rationalizing voice whispered in my ear that I could handle it now, being older and less manically spiky.

So what I did was tell a friend I was at risk. She listened, and wisely suspended judgment and refrained from instruction, though she said she felt like a bad friend for letting me go off to do whatever the hell I was going to do. (I had gotten to the point of renting a car to enable whatever-the-hell-I-was-going-to-doing.)

I put temptation aside, though, and used the car to have some fun with my daughter, first with breakfast at the Hideaway West, then to Castles-n-Coasters for pinball and vidgame fun, then to Samurai Comics, and lastly to her home to watch the first episode of Season Two of Netflix’s Daredevil. That evening I breathed a relief-sigh for having dodged another gambling bullet.

Now, why is the acrostic “cork quest” and not “pitch &toss”? Because this day’s card started with the drawing of a corkscrew. I liked that it looked a little like a deadly weapon; and it IS a deadly weapon, if used to unleash demons different from mine . . .

Four Deadly Words

February 25, 2016
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image

Beware!!

The four deadly words are, obviously, Iced Lemon Shortbread Cookies. Those words form a perfect storm of irresistible temptation. And when I saw them at the Family Dollar for less than $2.00 the package, I quickly became a lost soul.

For one of the Seven Deadly Sins is Gluttony. Gluttony is my personal subdemon under the umbrella demon Addictive Personality. Don’t bet me I can’t eat just one; A), I can’t; B) I shouldn’t be gambling, since my fearsomest subdemon is Gamblin’ Fool.

There’s this great guy I met on the Internet when his username was VTOL (Vertical TakeOff & Landing). Now he’s Coop to me. We’ve been cracking each other up–his fake movie posters and album covers, my photo captions–for over seven years. But sometimes we get more thoughtful, and Coop recently averred that as we evolve, so too do our demons. Mine are tamer, now, thank Goodness–but I still ate all damnably delicious 1200 calories of those cookies in two goes in one day.

You/Tensile

April 3, 2014
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Image

This is dedicated to all of us who have struggled against a bad habit and succeeded, however fleetingly.

Here are the words to the double (and double-entendre) acrostic:

YO! Quit that AWFUL habit! Play it straight
Your quality of H O P E will escalate
Obsequious, the vice purveyors win
Obliquely when the helpless rack up sins
Ubiquity might keep us on the trail
Uniqueness and good Purpose gets us hale

Astute observers will have noticed six of the letter Q lined up on the left side of the poem/array, and six of the letter P lined up on the right. Coincidence? Absolutely not. I have done my best to mind my Ps and Qs. [wicked smile]