The Pinball Wizard of Las Vegas

(For Larry)


I walked around in a kind of bubble.
I could look out but no one could look in.
I took only shallow breaths, the air was thin,
the oxygen limited.
No one knew 

about the dark thing that held me captive.
In Las Vegas, my favorite cousin 
mangled his hand between the whirring blades of a machine.
All that remained was a partial palm.
I was ten; he was sixteen.

Soon he arrived at my grandmother’s house
and I had to face the horror
of what he had lost. 
His palm was bandaged, 

hidden from view,
wrapped up like a miniature mummy.
He held a white, plastic ball and tossed it to me.

I tossed it back; he caught it

by pulling on the bottom of his shirt,

using it as a kind of glove
for the ball to softly land.
My fears of facing him vanished.

I was free.
How did he know how 
I had suffered?
Later the Las Vegas Sun 
wrote an article about him
and his prowess at pinball

(using just one hand and a palm).
He would often sit
in front of his house, drinking beer,
watching over his muscle car;

and when a can 
was thrown at his metallic prize,
he would be off to the Vegas Strip,
chasing after the perpetrator.

Still later, he worked
for the Department of Defense
at the Nevada Test Site.
He held the highest of security clearances.
He married. But he knew the dark side

of man’s inventiveness, of man’s machines.
He knew that they could bite,
that accidents happen. So he quit his job. 
His wife took pills and he drank.

The money ran out, there were fights.
It ended with the suicide of his bride.
He became emaciated and depressed.
His bones poked through his skin like rocks.

Somehow he seemed to hover above us all.
Then the convulsions began and he fell 
through the clouds, a diver, 
free falling, tumbling, without wings, 
without a chute.