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Gambler's Fallacy*
at Friday night card parties
where an obscene desperation &
a bluesy joy commingled
in our kitchen filled with the smoke from
fried whiting and marlboros
my father placed his faith in pale royalty &
long odds, while the woman who loved him
begged him to believe in the family he made,
the five girls and three boys who slept through
the raucous card games and did not care about
his mounting debt and descending ego
daddy thought he did believe in us,
thought those hours he spent with his
face behind those losing hands was his
bid to make a better life for us, to win for
us what he could not provide with a janitor's salary
like the kings & queens that betrayed him,
his belief was such a royal deceit
a lie invented and believed in
to mask his selfish fear and fragile ego
now, thirty five years later,
my father is as rare an occurrence in
my life as a royal flush
an empty phantom who waited thirty
years too late to greet his first born son with
the same joy as a full house or inside straight
when I see my father's friends on the street,
they tell me what a great poker player he was,
recount some meaningless moment
when his skills at five card stud
sent all of them home broke and amazed
I don't tell them about the family he wagered
And lost, the eight children who were left to
Play out the cards he dealt us
I donut have to tell them, I just answer Pokerfaced,
"no, haven't seen him in a while"
*(Gambler's Fallacy-The term refers to the mistaken
belief that one may predict correctly in a completely chance or
random situation. The bias is usually explained in terms of an over
emphasis on the role of contextual factors in understanding events
in the world. - B.P. Burns Compulsive Gambler 1973)
© Copyright C. Kenneth Carroll, 2000.
Fusion*
(for daddy & Grover Washington)
morning cold as the american soul
& sunless too
the night had emptied its pockets
of 8 inches of frigid powder which hid
blood stains
brown grass
& indifferent pavement
the alarm clock came screaming into
the cold tomorrow
as if 4 a.m. wasn't trauma enough
before the lacing of workboots,
the buttoning of uniformed shirts
ceremonial music for this working class rituals was needed
something warm & funky enough to drown out february's
chilly orchestration
for nearly three years daddy pulled out the same record
or left it from the night before waiting patiently on the
turntable like queued magic
will some Wynton-come-lately reactionary
or some Ken Burnsian dilettante tell my daddy
as his workboots stomp fresh tracks toward the bus stop
& his frostbitten fingers snap
to the sound of philly saxophones
wailing across a hothouse beat
that Grover Washington groove is NOT jazz...
& then see if he care.
© Copyright C. Kenneth Carroll, 2001.
-- April 9, 2001
© Copyright
2001-05 Seeing Black, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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