Author: johnbrandall

John Randall is a writer living in Missouri. His interests include camping, running, walking, cutting and burning wood, messing around with magnets, foraging, and listening to podcasts, many of them about baseball.

Vegas

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Everyone debauched but everyone a virgin in some way.  You can’t have tried everything, you can’t have tired of everything.  Something to come back for, something to save for next time, when you’ve got more money, some savings to play with, and hopefully better luck.

There’s a premium on everything, and nothing is free.  Not even luck. Luck costs money.  Luck for a buck?  Maybe the stars are free, but good luck seeing them through the neon broil. Maybe it’s time for a drink.  Maybe it’s time to skim some winnings, to cash out, to double down, to parlay, to bet the house, to count some cards.  

Good place to come for a birthday.  One you don’t want to remember.  Just cab doors opening and closing.  Croupiers changing shifts, cleansing their hands of the table and all the bad luck that came with it.  Cashiers sitting behind bars.  Chips in their neat little stacks of hundreds or thousands.  The peaks in the distance.  The hotels standing and stretching in the hot, dry desert air, the sun not far away.

Gathering chips for their bets, trying to get free drinks, trying to get comped.  A generous mix of Filipino, white, some blacks, you name it, a few Koreans, the new wealth Chinese—cabbies called them whales because they were big fish, big betters.  Old and older.  A bunch of kids crawling around doing god knows what, more likely to get kicked out of the casinos than anyone else because they don’t bet.

Mafia types—Skyball Chibelli and Baba, hoping the croupiers don’t look too close at their money.  Cabbies who went to high school here.  Eighties music, light shows, five-dollar minimums, champagne bottles, sixes and eights, Manhattans, Coronas, the hot sun, no clouds, bellmen looking for tips, towel boys looking for tips, everyone looking for tips and some people giving them.  The whole place like an octopus but with more arms, looking for anyway to get its hands on your money, and when it does—bang!  it pops its barb into you like an unexpected sting ray, whether you are an expert or not.  Here, no one is an expert.  Experts get beat up and know better...


Vegas never closes...

Bum

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Brought down by
parking tickets,
the weight of the city
upon him like
a dozen concrete elephants;
asleep in his best suit,
hung up on cigarettes,
never far from booze—
still clutching
that one bright coin
from the plaza fountain
that landed face-first.

All Night in Arles

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As my shepherd,
     you’re afraid I’ll fall asleep,
become the late-nite snack of woolen wolves,
     invite the midnight chef’s trichinosis
          into my star-swirled dreamworld.
But that won’t happen.
     I can stay awake anytime.
Because of Van Gogh’s paintings and—
     what other reason do I need?

A Cobra in Fall

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I don’t understand           why, when you Shed your skin,                     the scales remain beneath. Through           this layer and that,                     your eyes cloudy like milk,           you keep blooming. With new fangs,           with a flickering new tongue, you wind your way           through     Autumn’s     scales,                     your blood as                     cold as the Rain, blind to me           unless I move.

Cirrus

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The cirrus points to god      like a unicorn’s horn           in a quiet, curling way. Through it fall      two eagles fucking           on the carcasse of a lion. Nothing like wind,      and cold,           to separate ash                from its embers.

White Hole

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Eating color like bleach,   the reverse of a stain,      the release of blue         to a shirt in another dimension,            a puddle of white left behind,               rimmed with the touch                  of indigo sparkling.

The Knowledge

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Only because you’re handsome—
that dark black hair of yours,
those slick metallic sides
sweeping down the sidewalk,
stopping to kneel at the neediest feet—

You know where to take me
without even asking—
you know me
better than a cabbie in London
knows his British city. The main street,
the side street.  My street, yours.