Jack of Lanterns

Five elements make up the earth. Five points a pentagram.
There were five wounds on Jesus Christ. Five fingers on a hand.
The number five’s significant. It’s all through ancient lore.
And yet our playing cards have suits that number only four.

The spades that dig , the hearts that love, the clubs that bludgeon heads
The diamonds glitter. Every suit in shades of blacks and reds.
The cards can tell a story of deceit and sex and death.
Money, shovels, baseball bats, a lover’s dying breath

The cards can also educate about society
Royalty’s outnumbered but they have the power, see?
So many of the cards that number down from ten to ace
Are cards that by design don’t even have a person’s face.

The symbols on the playing cards are metaphors for life
And like those metaphors they can bring happiness or strife
Parables, morality, mortality and more
But yet the suits involved in decks of cards are only four

Yet five’s the number echoing back through the centuries.
Why four suits? There’s more to this than everybody sees.
There was another suit existed sure as I’m alive
I swear upon a pirate’s grave, they used to number five

There was a suit that lit the rest. A suit that banished night.
A suit of lamps. A suit of stars. It was a suit of light.
Lanterns it was called back then. The lantern suit of cards.
Lanterns lit the spades, the clubs, the diamonds and the hearts

You can’t spade a grave by feel, and hearts are ruled by sight
Diamonds don’t shine in the dark and clubs need help at night
How the lantern suit was shaped is lost to history
Possibly a flame or star was its geometry

It’s known the suit was odd because the highest card was jack
Jack of Lanterns was the highest card in every pack
For Jack had killed the Lantern King and claimed his lantern throne
He told the Queen to leave his house and now he ruled alone.

And so the King of Lanterns only had a leering skull
The Queen had running makeup tears, with racoon eyes gone dull
While Jack became the lantern made to light the crooked way.
The ray of light, the ray of hope, was Jack O Lantern’s ray.

Jack of Lantern’s rebel ways inspired all the players.
Gave them hope against the rich and lifted all their cares
Jack was always pictured with a horrid, leering smile.
Friendly, charming, scary, daring, rakish, full of guile

The suit was banned by King Chenisse who used the axe and lash.
Within a decade every deck of cards was burned to ash
And every hand that held a card was severed from its arm
Decks of cards were decks of death. They brought the owner harm.

Cards survived but Jack did not. His suit became extinct.
Yet every Halloween you’ll see a symbol that is linked
When settlers came to foreign soil, they brought Jackie, too.
And now from every pumpkin head, Jackie looks at you.

Jack O’Lantern stares from houses giving kids the treats
His smile lights the houses stairs as tiny teeth eat sweets
He smiles at the pranks and tricks all played on Hallow’s eve
Jackie lives. The king is dead and he is not bereaved.

So every Halloween remember Jack O Lantern’s face.
It is a suit of cards integral to the human race.
Remember Jack the fearless one, the one that lit the way
Although his suit’s forgotten, Jackie never went away.


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