Or deal

Memories are

Pick a card, any card,

except you do not choose

Well

we all carry a card or two

up a sleeve, lain

on the table

hence playing with

A full deck 

is rare

52 weeks

shuffle like thrown-up

cards, now the 

Five of clubs

Demands your decision.

Go fish for 

another

Hand read them

like palm lines

to call or stay

this time around

Krazy 8's and wild

Jokers interrupt as 

I shuffle through

these days,

Solitaire and surprised

at the random nature 

making a game

Of dealing with it.

Painting by Juan_Gris, 'Damier et cartes à jouer'  (Checkerboard and playing cards) c. 1915, Google Art Project in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 

Social security

Unless you were born
a boy
with silky chestnut hair
shaped like a perfect bowl of soft wound thread
nested as in a kitten ball
atop an angelic head dappled with
a sole magic dimple under the high arched
cheekbone amidst
perfectly placed and sized features,
jawlines of a steed,
eyes of witches hazel,
long indulgent black lashes,
long limber legs, strong steel shoulders
broad aspirations
long ago,
No-
you will not be chosen
as the one that was
a man for all ages
a perfect fit,
the right breed,
hand(y)some or skillful.

The rest shall be
Employees.



Painting by Benjamin Haydon [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Ellipsis

.

The point was never to be asked

as to why or where

for it was only an aim

as if trying may turn

chance into favor.

..

We looked together

at the same art on the same page,

seeing two very different

images

before us in this self-portrait and

agreed only how much it resembled 

us, individually. 

...

Another reason to dig deeper

and to not avoid the back-breaking 

work or big fear,

is discovering 

that the work worked perfectly

for making castles with dirt

or other temporary shelters for our

homeliness. 

Painting by Colin Campbell Cooper, 1921 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

super-natural and extra-ordinary

Most mistake
miracles for
just coincidence,
which is ironic

as a rule,
coincidence is when
the obstacle is dissolved entirely
just solutions remain

concentrated ad-mixtures
of luck and faith, a coupling
tangled making waves
turbid in the wake

hours
that cannot count stars
that doubts itself
clear enough

for the common kind
of man to consume
as pure prophecy
by numbers.

It is possible,
it was more than probable
that this kind
was a miracle
of just willful
coincidence.


Painting by Jean-François Millet [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Familia(r)

He wrote the same book
no ones' words he took.
She sang the same song,
with the lyrics all wrong.
They were called the same thing-
in a new context.
The same color was never used
twice, naturally-
charmed by the third time,
we finally got it
-together-
before we forget
how it all fit...
Some-thing gives...
Some-one takes a chance
risking no-thing
new a-gain.



Painting by Albert Edelfelt, At the Door (1901) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Just take a chance

The games we play

occupy our attention,

give us chance,

to entertain and refrain us

from certainties. We gamble

to participate in our fate

in the end, the outcome,

the odds

on us, against loss.

We leverage the inevitable,

predict the unfathomable

and recognize our own home range,

stable-steady,

gait in the headlong stride

of the dark horse.

-just to see-

We dance with destiny

then trip on our own shod

limbs that lead to

breaking those lucky legs

and just chalk it up to the chance

we lost.

Image is of a wood engraving by W.L. Sheppard (drawn by W.B. Meyers), Harpers Weekly October 1870, Betting on the Favorite.

The sound of falling stars

How does happenstance

happenever?

Does the light fall

thru (by accident)

or intrude only where

there are openings?

Even chance

offers probabilities, (unless) useless,

I guess, all is risk

(in)sound(less)ness

listening for a serenade

out There, 

in the near future called

Hope or Wishupon.

After all,

whose to say it

(was) all was lined up 

that way,

and this was going (all) ways

going to (all) happen

any (which) way

the circumstance of chance

happens

to 

fall

up

on

us
?

Image By NASA/Bill Ingalls [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, Perseid Meteor shower 8/2015.