Best Shooting Craps Poems
Soft silhouettes sashay by my window
Grievingly gazing out unto a world of which you may never know
Linen curtains briefly ruffled in the breeze
Old drunken Julius finds shade under the huge oak trees
The echoes of poverty ring outside my building
The pleas of panhandlers, the chattering of children
Dope feign Delilah, struts up and down the streets, waiting to turn her next trick
Evaporating into the air, the sulfuric stench
Jared, the jock in high school, deemed all American athlete
Shooting craps in the alley just to make ends meet
Every night like clockwork, the street walkers stand by Ms. Martina’s door
When the sun rises and they scatter like roaches, she anoints the ground with oils
Hakeem stands on one corner, screaming out” Would you enter the Kingdom of heaven if you should die today?
While his brother ShaQuan stands across the street, on the corner peddling cocaine
When we were growing up Ebony and I vowed to always be best friends
I sit on my stoop and she doesn’t even look my way as she’s followed by her six kids
In the evening gun shots light up the night, like the fourth of July
Another wife a widow, another mother loses her child
With not so much as a reason why.
Shrines built in rememberance of lost souls, adorn the sidewalks
Where once laid the body of an innocent child outlined by blood stained chalk
I am here in the midst of a world that I may never really know
I sit here day after day, with my pad and my pen,
Trying to escape the perils of the Ghetto
Written August 10, 2013
My darling
Where have you been tonight
She said I've been around town
I've been around town all night
Shooting craps with the girls
Where the women wear pearls that glisten so bright in your eyes
At that casino with the fountain as high as the sky
I guess you came home with penniless pockets
You say tonight wasn't your night
But that story holds as much water
As an ark made of paper
The ocean falls right through the floor
The ark floored by a screen door
Cause I've seen you out by that old familiar highway
The one where I picked you up
In that van we spent our first night
But that promise you made me you haven't kept
To settle down and don't go around town tonight
'Round town tonight, 'round town tonight
But you just couldn't stay away
From where the red light shines so bright
So you could feel as high as that fountain
Higher than a mountain tonight
But I'm here patiently waiting
For my darling to come home tonight
BUSINESS
Soaring and Gliding,
moving with the wind
be no ones Fool.
Learn the trades tricks
then multiply and amplify
that Families pride !
Laying bricks or shooting craps,
Incorporating or Franchising-
just do your best !
Step on no feet,
Leave no sorrows-
Ours is Gold.
Push and Shove,
tare out your hair,
you'll reap so quickly a far !
They answer questions seldom asked
tend to the mundane, "lesser" tasks
their halos tilted scally caps
homilies of wilted raps
soulless homeless shooting craps
rattling unnumbered dice
you may win once, never twice.
These voices of the lesser god
bedeviled by a life unshod
still reach to touch the garments hem
of gods that turned away from them.
3/30/2020
Vegas nights and neon lights
A desert playground of sin
Enraptured then you're captured
The moment you walk in
The ambience intoxicates
The chance of fortune looms
Once you call you risk it all
In crowded smoke-filled rooms
Got a bucket full of coins
You think it's now or never
For a buck you try your luck
And pull another lever
Come on seven eleven
Shooting craps you'll never win
Anticipate as you wait
Just to roll the dice again
With all your money in their hands
You leave quiet as a mouse
Beyond a doubt you'll find out
You can't ever beat the house