Four changes for a joystick, three buttons,
and the balance of indices and instructions
labelled on the top, right, and bottom of
the squarish, standoffish machine
created by palettes of colours, and
violence from the haptic buzzes
in the trunk of a quirky, obsolescent machine;
the old diner slot machine. The fruits rolled,
for the last time at ten in the night,
with the fizzes and slurs of Coca Cola
and tin cans of draft beer dressed in non-lethal green,
followed by the adjourn of the clamour.

Joy was the word. For the fathers and
mothers: traditions that have come and gone
since the 1983 night with the first punk runk
were the cheers and trash talk, the cheetah-esque
rollerblade of images gliding down with
the grease on the walls beside it, and the memories
that one may have been broke after few plays
on the machine.
It may have lived a life unknowingly acknowledging
how it stipulated a decree in many hearts
to never play it again, or to disarm the
habits to gamble altogether.
But, after last night,
all the quietus thereafter
is the same that will go for the broken sight:
the diner without flips of coins,
or of people, in the dark, dark night.