a
handful of aces
We
were the little ones;
Poker-faced Kings, wild
One-eyed Jacks, anything
Really - dealer's choice,
Around Ronn's
Saturday table
In a kitchen full of grey smoke,
Butts, blue, white and red chips,
A few pennies thrown in for effect
Drinking rum
Bluffing - just old enough to buy
Whiskey.
Our unity lay
somewhere
Hiding beneath the worthless kitty
And the often outrageously fierce
Competition, beneath the volume
Of Queen, Triumph and Genesis - the
Lyrics we really knew and we knew
Really said, beneath even the few
Pennies, thrown in for effect.
It lay somewhere
in our identity
- in the universe of discourse
On girls, cars, goals and life.
It sat solid in rickety, uncomfortable
Chairs, peering over the tops of
The cards in winning combinations
Of smiles and laughter.
I suppose you
had to be there
- to know that of course Paul, Ronn,
Anthony, David and Adrian rhymed,
To know that the game,
Its purpose and meaning,
Were something composed of a bunch of anything,
To know that we were young and wild,
To know that
Ronn's kitchen table had a leaf
That sloped, making it difficult to pile
Your winnings in front of you
Or to know that in the bottom rightmost
Cupboard was the best granola in the world
And that Ronn would eventually bring it out.
The game, of
course, had its mechanics and
Certainties. Anthony would inevitably make it
Kings and Little Ones.
Paul would inevitably catch me bluffing
With something I at one point
Thought I had.
Adrian
Hoad-Reddick