deal troubleshoot brutal

Coyote Poker

The hand well-played is not always obvious
from the hand dealt.
It’s a constant troubleshoot
not a constant win.
The stakes are everything—
laid out, played out, piercing.
The deal is random
the cards are often marked
invisibly
making some hands brutal
in subtle hidden ways
even to, or especially to, those
who see and know everything.
Omniscient ones.

Reincarnate only within
the limits of face and suit.
Even then it’s luck or fate
or the turn of the trickster.

extract organic widowed

The bird that mocks is widowed–
some organic extract weakened her system,
or perhaps all her eggs were laid out
like a pauper counting pennies
without hope even for a side of fries,
or maybe she just couldn’t stomach
last year’s cuckolding mate courting
blindly with other’s songs.

Darwin doubted
a standard of truth
by noting the differences.
In my yard all I hear is
beautiful music.

(first draft)

Thanks

A thank you note was requested for writing with the prompts wave, lean and quirky.

Dear Renee-

I hope you saw me wave from the car as I rolled down the driveway into the red- maple-lit street.
The visit was stimulating and energizing as always. Being together brings out all the quirky, crazy ideas that have needed an outlet. Nothing lean or minimalist for us-full out color, texture and relief to bring things to life.
Many, many thanks for hosting the latest of our Art Fests. They seem to be getting better and better as does the food.
Looking forward to the next one out my way.

Love, Lois

Sinister evening air wafts in from the industrial farms that are threateningly close, colluding. Orchards, devoid of life other than the twisted fruit trees augmented by fertilizers and over watering, ring my encampment polluting my air, water and my earth.
My garden benefits from their pesticides, whether I want them or not.
Ignorant famers, truculent to the last, call for preservation of America for the youth in debt-ceiling debates but ignore America’s dangling doom as it slides into disastrous defeat to the sludge, burning and sickness of their redundant farming practices.