Armless Bandit


Just got paid and held back some.
Poker machine, here I come!
Got a crisp C-note to lay
so stand back- I feel hot today!


See the geezer pleading with machine one?
Bullcrapping, backslapping son of a gun?
Spent his life saving thirty-one thou
which is thirty thou more than he has right now.
He holds up this wall - sometimes that post-
but soon he'll be a disillusioned ghost.


Come on ten! Why didn't you show?
It had to hit so I could crow!
One Jackson's dived into the bay,
but here's four more-it's time to play!


Three summers before, the old doll on two
Had a paid house, car, and money beaucoup.
Street jive says she rents a flat in some dive
and part-times at Wal-Mart at age sixty five.
Works when they let her- rainy or sunny-
then drops 'round here to visit her money.


Shooting forty- it keeled over dead!
Oh WHY did I get out of bed?.
Won't give me a hand! Nothing, I say!
What hair I've left has all turned grey.


That young kid counting tickets from 3
just dropped in a fin and took out sixty.
At work tommorrow the cub's brag to all
will be his self-masterminded windfall.
But in a few days, he'll come back for bear-
dig in deep- swing hard- and hit only air.


My last bucks reached one eighty-eight
then sunk straight down just like a weight.
I took a last look at the glass
and swear I saw a horse's ass.


If a sucker does leave (in this place they joke),
Two more they recieve, 'cuz the house don't go broke.


Dan Taylor



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