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Threads: 408
Joined: May 2014
Let's Pretend it's April - Nov. 17
Rules: Write a poem for LPiA on the topic or form described. Each poem should appear as a New Reply to this thread. The goal is to, at the end of the month, have written 30 poems for the month of November. (or one, or six, or fifteen) Prompts may be revisited at any time. All members are welcome.
Topic : Write a poem inspired by a lottery.
Form : Any
Line requirements: 8 or more
Feel free to reply with comments or kudos as you wish.
Questions?
Posts: 894
Threads: 176
Joined: Jan 2021
A Bolivian sergeant
won the lottery to murder
the captive Che Guevara.
Che was wounded,
bound hand and foot,
locked inside a schoolhouse.
His last words to his executioner:
“Shoot, coward. You are only
going to kill a man.”
The Bolivian officers
wanted to cut off Che’s head
as proof of their victory,
but the CIA man, fearing
that would seem barbaric,
convinced them to merely
cut off his hands.
He was buried in a secret grave
along with six fellow guerillas.
For twenty years
the Bolivian sergeant,
convinced he was on a Cuban hit list,
lived in hiding, wearing disguises,
and only spoke of his role
for money. The lottery he won
gained him little but fear, while the officers
wrote books and gained promotions.
In 2007, Cuban doctors
operated on his eyes for free,
part of Operacion Milagro;
he was almost blind,
his sight was restored
and the lottery finally paid off.
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Joined: Nov 2015
Missing Variable
It can be demonstrated
mathematically
that purchase of a ticket
in a major lottery
is quite the good deal.
Let us say the jackpot
is a modest sixty-five million
and chance of winning it
one in thirty million.
This means your two-dollar ticket
(even without “instant” side-games)
has a present value of around
two-seventeen.
How can any punter
resist odds like that?
Well, do the other math:
after the drawing
your two-dollar ticket
is worth Zero.
And every week you buy one
without winning
you’re down two more bucks
with no return at all
except frustration.
The missing variable
is time: live a week in hope
and thirty years in loss.
Still like those odds?
They say the lottery’s for education
but bettors never learn.
Non-practicing atheist
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Threads: 225
Joined: Aug 2016
Dave never gambled before
No real interest
22 years old
200$ short on rent
Ready to move out and move on,
Jim wants to go to the casinos tonight,
Across state lines, they're open late,
200$ the first hand
22 minutes
Walk away to
Never played hold em again
Peanut butter honey banana sandwiches
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Threads: 466
Joined: Nov 2013
Each night my grandparents would
tune in to the lotto, having
jotted down some numbers on
whatever scrap of paper they could find.
They never purchased any tickets,
to my knowledge, though I never
asked them why: it was a ritual
long preceding me, one I believed
I did not have the right
to question, not unless
I joined them. Maybe it was
for the thrill of sudden wealth
without the attendant baggage -- the legal fees,
the fawning kin, even the ire of the saints
for having put one's faith in luck
and somehow being right -- much like how
I'd rather watch another play
a horror game than be myself
the patsy, but the truth
went with them late last year....
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Threads: 285
Joined: Nov 2011
There's so much "detail"
and an image so I just put a link in here:
< Crap Shoot >
Can be found here
a brightly colored fungus that grows in bark inclusions
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Joined: May 2022
Each day is another ante
in a game we play, odds
south of the lottery. But
today sitting in morning traffic,
caught just below the crest
of a rolling rise, on my left
a cemetery, headstones steadfast
in their rows, granite-grey against
the slate-grey of a roiling November
sky; first winter storm coming
in from the west. Trees dot
the horizon, some bare boughed,
the oaks holding limbs full glow
rust-red and burnished orange;
leaves lit in light from the low sun.
A scene a photographer would take
off their Rolex and go all in, but
today I get to lay down my cards
arms wide I pull in my winnings
counting and stacking every chip
waiting for traffic to move along.
Posts: 751
Threads: 408
Joined: May 2014
B I N G O
7 25 44 57 62
15 22 40 50 70
11 30 FREE 46 74
2 28 37 55 68
10 27 39 59 75
so close, so close!
She picks at the gray wax
under her thumbnail
and checks her purse
for coins.
