WITH LADY LUCK IN LAS VEGAS
Whitesound was her song. As if tied to the mast
you heard the drums, the pulse slushing in your ears,
your mother's voice singing of Cinderella,
Lady Luck laughing on her polychrome throne.
In a magicbook you found the random numbers
pure as the day they'd leaked from a resistor,
and there divined the formula of the world,
so marvelous your sense would not contain it.
To Vegas then you came, with a hunch, with a system,
Lady Luck loomed in the whir of the slots
where she wove the white digits she pulled over your eyes.
There was no wheel, no cards, no sense, no system,
but your head spun from the drinks. You crashed
on the random rocks outside the casino door.
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Author:
Robert Southwick Richmond (
Offline) - Published: December 15th, 2020 10:32
- Comment from author about the poem: I wrote this poem some time in the 1980s, not a personal experience, but a meditation on the the human response to randomness. -Tied to the mast: Odysseus had himself tied to the mast of his ship, so he could hear the Sirens' song but not wreck his ship. - White noise: The ultimate random sound. - Polychrome throne: the reference is to the first line of Sappho's hymn to Aphrodite. - Resistor: A leaky resistor generates the electrical equivalent of white noise, traditionally used to generate random numbers. - Formula: Allusion to Fermat's last theorem, which he claimed he'd solved, but couldn't fit the proof into the margins of the book.
- Category: Unclassified
- Views: 55
Offline)
Comments3
Welcome to MPS Robert! Great start here. I like your poem and would love to read more.
Thanks, FredPeyer! I see I can only post one poem a day. Took me a few minutes to master the MyPoeticSide formatting for a poem. Nobody after Arno Holz (1863-1929) should be allowed to format poetry with a middle axis (a bear to set in type, but a click of the mouse for a modern word processor).
I have the same problems, so I don't even try anymore. Whatever way it comes out, that's it. I guess the content is more important than the format. Happy writing!
Good write Robert.
My poems, and some other poets, seem to be 'middle axis'. When typing them up they start from the left, then appear middle-centred!
There's a bar at the top of the page you can use to format. You can change it from middle axis to left-justified. You can also change the type font and size, use italics, and a few other things.
BRIAN HERE (Angela is My Wife since March 2020 !) Good Afternoon ROBERT ~ Welcome to MPS it is a PROACTIVE site ! Thanks for your first Poem ! Im a CHURCH DEACON so I dont gamble ~ BUT ~ I passed through VEGAS a couple of years ago ~ just to see if was as Bizarre as it is portrayed and it is ! Even in our small *Best Western* we had to wade through about 50 slot machines just to check in ! In the bigger Hotels people were shoving money in like zombies ! When a big win was anouncd (and t he money came pouring out of the machine) Jim Shlenk from INDEPENDENCE IOWA wins $1500 it made the Punters pour their Dollars in FASTE R !
At VEGAS it seemed everybody had a SYSTEM & a DREAM & a big reliance on LADY LUCK ! Thanks for sharing it revived MEMORIES ~ Please check our SITE ~ Thanks A & B !
Peace & Joy to YOU & YOURS
Love Angela & Brian ! !
I don't gamble either, but my poetic persona for the day did! I was in Las Vegas for a medical meeting in 1978 - stayed at the Hilton Hotel, which burned down a few weeks later - spent a week there and never so much as dropped a quarter in a slot machine. But Vegas was indeed one of the more bizarre worlds I've ever been in.
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