Casino Poem by Percy Dovetonsils

You ain't so tough
Nicky Santoro.
Listen to you whine
while they bash
your brother's brains out
in a cornfield
and roll both
your bloody, battered,
barely breathing bodies
into a muddy hole
to be buried alive.
When you squeezed that
Irish mobster's eyes
out of his skull
with a vice,
you weren't whining
or even imagining
you ever could whine.
But what you're discovering
as you fight for breath
under all that dirt
is that there's
always somebody
tougher than you,
somebody ready
to step up to the plate
and take a roundhouse swing
that sends your skull
yard,
flying into the bleachers
in the bottom of the ninth
level of hell,
that place
you always knew in your heart
you were headed
in the top of the first
when your uniform
was immaculate
and it was possible
to pretend,
at least to yourself,
that the game
would go on
forever.