Once In a Lifetime

 Once in a lifetime you get the Big Prize

but it comes wrapped in rainy days

and cotton batting, incognito if you will.

You stupid fuck, wake up will you,

all you have to do is throw out a hand

and there it is, shiny as the 4th of July,

fantastic as a first kiss, spinning like a new planet.

You'll look back like Girl Genius some day and say,

yes yes THAT was the day, the thing that lit you, burned you brilliantly.

Sure, the slog and grind will still be there, grinning with

its lopsided sour grapes grin, the days will still stick with thorns,

but the thing, the marvelous unexpected thing, stays lit, stays true.

Look, Bunky, what I tell you is true, and when it's over you'll

howl and want to die, that's part of it, the lit thing the fantastic thing

that comes once in a lifetime, but if you throw out your hand,

your OTHER hand just as the ship is going under, sometimes

the once in a lifetime comes twice, repeats itself like double sixes,

and there you are, lucky and lucky again, you shiner, you flaming star.

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for Dverse Poetics "Once in a Lifetime"

Music: Blaze Foley "Clay Pigeons"