GAMBLERS ANONYMOUS

This may be about the cravings in the mouth of a man with few front teeth standing by a Wizard of Oz slot machine for three or more hours, staring into the darkness. Or about what desire crosses the faces of people seated at nearby machines or the wheel of patter between them. Maybe someone once said that chocolate is just desire barred. This isn't about everything happening for a reason, except the things that don't, or about a human brain always finding patterns in the numbers of a roulette wheel even when there might only be the illusion of one. Roulette means “small wheel.” This could be about reasons being patterns in the small wheels of our minds. This could be about the divine grace of a certain waitress, dipping at the knees to serve a Chocolate Martini. Or about the darkness filling the glass she serves, but this is not about the darkness in the skin of chocolate. This might be about melodies made by spinning reels or tinkling bells or a pattern that could be encoded in the sequence of the lights. Perhaps this is about the all night party streamers of the waitresses' hair, about what inflates the life rafts of her lips, what taunts in the dark sea of her skin or what spins in the small wheels of her eyes. But, this is definitely not about the darkness in the center of chocolate. Not about how many degrees of heat could make it liquid between the lips. This wants to be about a woman walking past and checking her side view mirror to see if he's watching and is almost about which mixed drinks he may or may not sip behind the darkness of sunglasses as she swipes his debit card in the register of longing. This could be about a bar or what resembles candy in her smile.. This is not about the darkness in a sentence of chocolate. Not about how it melts and sticks. This may be about how the arrows of some eyes narrow if he doesn't speak or the mariachi band of laughter from certain lips when he does. This is likely about a no name man standing in front of a bank of thieving machines dreaming of bars lining up in a pattern on a reel, probably about a progressive jackpot. About how we invent goddesses to explain the patterns of darkness in our luck. This is not about the darkness at the center of chocolate. This seems to be a smile through reclining eyelids or a soft lick of the lips afterwards. But this can’t be about what gets wagered on the tip of a tongue or about being lost in a bet, and definitely doesn't involve the name of a goddess dissolving in his mouth on the slow cab ride from the airport of possibility to the dark shadows at the center of the city of half sighs.