Dry brown blood
Buried under bleached sheets
The harrowed sighs
Of suicides
Hover in rafters
At the Flamingo, Luxor,
Ersatz Versailles
Necrotic aerobiome
A cold crucible
For Mammon & its acolytes:
All You Can Eat
Complimentary Drinks
Biohazard Cleanup Crew on speed dial
Every casino is a pseudosepulchre
Tobacco crust & cadaverine juices
Cling to carpets
Beneath the feet of a Sheik
About to throw the dice
& entify Fate
To claim Its prize
While the drunk become one
Conclamant howl
When a bikini-clad granny cracks aces
At Virtual Poker
The Avatar Dealer,
A flickering PAWG,
Winces or winks
As coins dump from its slit
Outside, exiles roast under waning sunlight:
A former dancer dumpster dives,
Finds: a rusted speculum,
Sopping gauze & tulle,
Tins of cat food
He feasts
Decorates his cane
& tattered tap shoes
& scuttles off the Old Strip
Into ancient shadow
While a wraith rides his bike
Thrice around
Lost tourists
Looking for the boa outlet
Trenchcoat flaps behind him
Like wings as he speeds
Off into emerging constellations
& the moon blooms
From the Valley of Fire
Where boulders govern
All the killers
& losers
Clawing myths
Into escarpments
Disintegrating into time
