Game Night

Why do I even make the effort--
That is: why leave my house at all--
For these bimonthly bids to prove I'm congenial
By locking horns with essential strangers
Over rolls of the dice, the wordings of rules,
The scufflings of pawns across the board?
(Puny gumdrop guys on cardboard adventures . . . )
Apart from our charming Fearless Leader,
Master of modish, epic campaigns,
We're every one a stunted schlub,
Socially speaking, anyway.
The players have little to offer the others
Beyond competition and snarky conceit
Should one of us triumph, a shallow soaking
In victory foam--diet soda, mostly,
And never champagne.
We grow rather fierce under the pressure
Of marshaling troops on our battlefields,
Our men ever victimized by opponents
And alliances doomed by turncoat finks.
The ganging-up can be hard to take,
But how else can the weak defeat the less wimpy,
Except by dint of flaws en masse
Stifling the hale with their gauzy pall?
At the end of the evening, we trudge on home,
The tallies of contests fresh in our heads,
Yet soon forgotten. Better some blanks
Than reliving our Waterloos over and over
While chiding ourselves till the next call to play.