SHUFFLE MACHINE

SHUFFLE MACHINE

Between her fingers, 

it ruffles like
a thing with feathers, 

two faces riffling,
glossy finished breaths,

each a volume of vortex

arrested and booked under
the Second Law of Thermodynamics,

a coffle of cardboard chaos,

replacing male order,

dovetailing a desire

that cannot be boxed or cut
by sharpest image edges

or a deck’s sexy designs,

Victoria's Secret interlaced.

What's held in
your table-side tank 

of bated breath?

Necks pulse in vain,

throb like traffic lights
on a Saturday night,

hands clean as gloves
on a bourgeois burglar, 

cuffed and cupped,
trembling, riffling the clay

chips lining the edge
of a bet that begs anarchy.
She is your Miss Fortune, 

running fountain of infinity. 

Everybody misses
the river except you. 

Always the kissed banks

swishing the same. 

The pot wants 

to be right,

maybe raised. 

What it gets 

is to be splashed.

More and more under
each undealt door

through which "next" echoes,
there is a rising,

like the soddeness of 

an unseen sea. 

Now her

practiced hands pitch

tomorrow's date, 

helicoptering across
an oblong table.

The waitress brings
something you crave

as a daffodil doth
of the dew,
(no napkin, please)

says sip this,

her lips are full,

her wrists fragrant,

but her heart seems barred.

I heard a bee buzz, honey
when I tried. 

And if you tip her-
over? Spit, 

Was she

swallowing anything?

This aint origami,
(you are not allowed

to fold.)
Who can change
the credit of the cards?

She would of course
simply re-deal

to your empty seat. 

Anyways,

she was
the Queen of Hearts

peeled like a rind

by randomized hands,
but were you ever
her suited King kicker?

And until next we meet, may all your potatoes be sweet (and dusted with cinnamon)