Remind me, again... remind me.
Tell me the triumphant tale of my father:

With pleasure...

In a smokey daze, awash with the commotion
Stuttering through the yellowing cavern of working men,
He watches barfing, bowing heads soaking in the numbers
Tumbling from the cackling machine,
With hope etched into each man's impaired focus.
Deeper still savage packs of tradesmen, 
Popping their sweat-stained blue collars,
Tipping swilled beer and exhaling bluer air
At the expense of grizzled flat-capped snowy-tops
Grumbling at them from the 
Protection of the fruit machines.
In the midst of this chaos, this caterwauling din,
His shining pate cannot be missed,
Like a sleek golden embroidered sarık
In the heart of the seedy, dusty souk.
He holds up the bar, like Atlas, with his nonchalant pose,
To drown his parched interior
Even with shivering cold and clenching
Breath expelled with the pain of a punch,
As if two iron hands gripped his lungs
To stifle the natural motion.
But, regardless, he's drawn to that glimmering clatter,
Like a brain-washed shooter.
Evidently the thickening sludge gathering
At rim confounded him into retreat,
Battered him to return, because he tottered back
To his home for the final time.
Wasting his final hours on cigarettes
And pensive introspection, the malady consumed him.
He can resist it no longer, his reserves depleted,
And finally he's smothered within himself,
Descending to that place where 
He is free to try to love himself again
Without the dragging chains of rejected lost-love
Pulling him under the sands 
To suffocate in his own desiccated heartbreak.

Tipu Sultan, Ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore and rocket artillery pioneer, was born today in 1750.

Robert F. Kennedy, American politician and lawyer, was born today in 1925.