The old card trick

[O]n the first day of February, 2017, a new game was invented.

After I read a coworker’s haiku, I said, “I bet if you give me one word, I can make a poem out of it.”

Thus, the game was born.

Recently, in what I took to be a challenge, I was given the word “kumquat.”

So I wrote the following poem called “The old card trick.”

There once was a boy

Who, instead of a toy

Played with an old card trick.

He put out a candle

He held by a handle

Without even blowing the wick.

Folks stood in awe

At the tricks they all saw

With coins, with fire and a stick.

This tale filled with magic

It turned awfully tragic

For the boy with an old card trick.

The boy became man

Mastered sleight of hand

And many a pocket did pick.

The trick he thought funny

Made him some money

But never did any job stick.

The man soon was poor

He was hungry and sore

And most of his time he spent sick.

One day at the store

A kumquat he did score

The swipe he pulled off he thought slick.

But the men of the law

Didn’t like what they saw

And they ran after him pretty quick.

He ate the kumquat

‘Til he heard a gunshot

And he knew he’d turned his last trick.