A Poker Poem for You

I was up sixty but now I'm down ten
This is my usual poker mantra

When I'm up sixty, I think, get up, get up now!
Leave the table with the money in your pocket!
Buy three pizzas
and three or four cups of coffee
or one tank of gas!
You can get all the way to Park Ridge New Jersey on this

but no, I stay, and my trip kings turns into her ace high flush
and I was up sixty and now I'm down ten.
again.

and no, I don't wonder, how does this happen
It's pure hubris baby.
Hubris and that thing that always happens in the movies,
That thing that makes you yell at the TV screen,
When the protagonist says, I made a million robbing banks and I'm gonna to retire now,
And then DeNiro comes along and says,
one more, man
Just one more
Then you'll have TWO million dollars,
And won't that be a whole lot better?

And that's what it always is at the table
I'm about ready to go and I think:
Well let me win just one more pot
Let's make it an even hundred up,
and then I'll go

And I almost always end up back here,
thinking about how I was up sixty,
and truly, really, absolutely should have left right then.
Instead, I was up sixty,
And now, as you know,
I'm down ten.