At tables of obeisance, there they shoot
Lucite cubes out onto the numbered space
With zest the cubes are hurled, and with each throw
The hearts are beatin’; will it be craps?
Or perhaps this time the house will be beat
Gimlet digital eyes peer down from on top
To ensure no cheating down there is sired
And if someone is caught, likely he’ll bleed
Casinos, notoriously devoid of mirth
Especially in reaping of dollar bills
If you’re lucky, they’ll tell you to hit the road
For this insurrectionary offense
The odds against pulling it off are long
Because casinos are crooked to the core
It is you who are always going to lose.

On this game of dice, let’s spend some more time
A keyboard click and to the Web refer
True origin of the game is unsure
Per personae person Sophocles, the first
To use them, their inventor, Palamedes
On the other hand, Herodotus disputes this.
He claims, without being the least bit snark,
That the originators of this sport
Were Lydians—thus goes his argument—
In Asia Minor, then a large province
Well, that is the stance of these two Greek men
But dice date back much farther, is another view
That might just be enough to give one pause
They were conceived at a much earlier date
In Egypt, critics of Greek theory scoff
Excavators combing Egyptian hills
And valleys discovered tombs, looked inside
And saw evidence that gave them a jolt
It appeared that high-rollers lived in style
Dating way back to 6000 B.C.
It seemed dice’s origin is wide
Having developed on many a coast
Independently—no single siring
Early versions were not the cubes we now cheer
What in those days did they use for dice?
Fruit stones, sticks, pebbles, nut shells tossed in the game
Then a substance employed to which we nod
Nominally when we’re in a casino crowd
We speak of “throwing the bones,” perhaps glower
If the throw yields the dreaded serpentine eyes
And we bottom out and then feel like hell
It was bone material that inspired
Proto-dice that caused gambling addicts harm
Even in those early days, by firelight
The addiction problem is nothing new
Though between then and now, there’s a big gulf.
I’ll throw back to this “dicequisition” soon.