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Author: Guede Mazaka
Rating: PG. Still not recommended for children.
Pairing: Whatever you want to see.
Disclaimer: Characters not mine.
Summary: Where reality is.
***
I. The Card Game
The table's a wide lawn
The chairs are bills and properties and history
The players are everyday souls
The dealer is skull-headed and bony-fingered
And deck cut, overhand shuffle
Watch the fingers, 'cause the cards slice deep
Cancer-aunt, car crash nephew
Insurance choking up the throat
School drops away with the low pair
And guilt rises with the high ace
What's taken and what's given
All the same, when:
The jacks are lower than fools
The queens are sag-breasted
The kings are chained to time
A heart to break, first love's scars
A club to crush, ideals by the wayside
A diamond to cut, strangling riches
A spade to bury, fearful death
And one man--one man is dealt his end
Black solitaire, death by slow sightless stumbles
He refuses.
The dealer says nothing
The man refuses.
The players cry and howl, they drag
Clicking claws as the basket rears up
Straw prison, hard as steel
And the man refuses.
He rides the rim to the sky,
Burning like Icarus, and
he falls, white hot pain against black
***
II. The Crossroads:
There's a guitar, and hands cradle it
Musician on a tombstone
There's a knife, and hands sharpen it
Woman at his feet
There are guns, and hands load them
Yellow-paired eyes circling
And the man can see none of it
But he feels them, like coals under his tongue
"Where is this?"
"Outside. Where we live.""
For the first time, the man
Breathes
He stands, and walks
And hell freezes over, the sun tumbles
Elsewhere
Here, they live.
***