O LUCKY MAN

In his prime, my paternal grandfather was, by all accounts, a charismatic fellow whose considerable worldly success was undermined by an undue fondness for gambling.
This poem is neither about him nor for him but for all those caught in the same exquisitely cruel snare. 

REQUIEM FOR A GAMBLER

All that you owned when at your peak,
with business buzzing like a hive,
was squandered on a losing streak
while, hopelessly, hope stayed alive.
No game of chance could you forgo:
you’d kiss the dice for one more throw.

Slow horses, greyhounds half asleep,
the Poker games you always lost,
the endless nights you got in deep
with fools who didn’t count the cost,
the roulette wheel’s capricious spin,
those gambles you could never win,

left you like this: a rented room,
two threadbare suits, grease-stained and creased,
a stack of bills that I assume
no one will pay since you’re deceased.
You always were an optimist.
Where are they now, those dice you kissed?