That Game
Even Copernicus was only brave
Enough to publish once he looked back
And saw his ideas had been seen before.
Since then, they say, we don’t feel special anymore.
Can’t tell the history we’re living through.
And I was impressed how the adults knew.
At least tragedies are known at the time.
We have scripts for them, formulas, stock speeches.
The comedies, I suppose, in the Shakespearean sense,
When they’re not weddings, or at least not our own,
Perhaps fall into formulas and stocks.
And don’t we watch games because they’re fun?
Someday perhaps I’ll watch it all again.
Perhaps with a book open in front of me,
Or at this rate a screen.
Perhaps someday I’ll see it start to end
Perhaps with more commentators behind
Or just try to remember that long night.
The computers were almost fast enough.
So many stats laid at our fingertips.
That as we watched all of their leads forsake them
We’d calculate the odds in time to break them.
Perhaps this night won’t end; it’s too dramatic.
The announcers are prattling and I’m
Hearing it clear as day. There is no static
And I am still up, far past my bedtime.
Another commercial break, or dead air
Or inane words–does no one know the scope
Of this game or does no one really care?
Another run comes in, a chance, a hope.
But hours pass before they really have
Something to scream about. And then they scream.
I do not jolt awake, but jolt aware;
Since to get through the night that will not end,
I turn back to the night that seemed not to.
It is four or five in the morning,
As many months since the season ended,
And I still cannot fall asleep.
The Squirrels
Busy rhyming (and other things) offsite, but inspiration struck me today. Looking forward to getting more sportsy in the spring…well. “Spring.” As it were.
It looks like squirrels died here.
A family below the trees, in a grassy line;
Large and small and brown and gray.
Their futile claws dig still into the dirt,
So the city’s winds do not touch them.
Zomibified grass surrounds them
But there they stand still…
I blink and they are all that’s left
Of yesterday’s snow. It is February
And winter has never come to stay.
NLCS Jottings
How tall must you stand, how far
From this world
Until, as a cloud,
Nobody knows what your shadow is?
Wisconsin. Wisconsin! Unsaid,
Too casual to show up in discussion
(or is it just a constraint pointing my way?)
Wisconsin, divisional champions. Missouri, wild cards,
Though I too can pull away
St. Louis from Kansas City.
An arbitrary imposition–
nobody would claim arbitration
Is arbitrary, if not
Judging from far away
And much that is not just discussions of salary.
Judging in words, if words that sound halfway
Grammatical, can sound broad.
Lash out at a sign,
A stand-in for many similar or
Dissimilar things.
A proxy, a symbol,
A goat.
Or throw off grammar, form, constraint,
Writing for your bright cohorts
Who know with a wink what you want to
(Though you wouldn’t, you know, not in just that way)
Say.
A young man…not so young, not as young
As all who mock. And not as old
As all who stand tall and jab softly.
What can you watch on TV? An at-bat.
A pitch thrown towards a man in a mask.
A batsman, bat in hands, not facing you, not facing
A backstop. So in a right look
At southpaws anyway.
Or a hit ball–a shortstop grabs, runs, throws,
A tiny blur in uniform runs backwards
Towards a far wall, puts his hand up, and?
Anything.
Or it can zoom in, not at action, not at anything,
Just a thing to look at,
A moundsman, light, bill down,
Not looking at you
But how far from far!
Or cut away
To Tony La Russa.
I am not good with knowing
Who is who, who looks how
But now I think I know
Tony La Russa’s staring stand.
I think.
More things change
(As mentioned previously, I’ve been pushing myself in unfamiliar directions poetry-wise, so you might see a little more free verse from me. There were several “triggering events” for this one, and maybe they deserve separate poems, but I’m not interested in doing too much with this form just yet. 
Some big, or at least medium-sized, lipogram updates are on the way, but that’s for later.)
Dance partners for this blink
I clutch your frigid hand
Through the digital whirlwind
Flecks swarming all around
Under the ideal gas law
We can assume they’re moving in every direction equally.
In real life, gravity wins
And the roof falls in.
Half the lessons unteachable
Would and rightly meet
Only ridicule–if you’d been there
Gone through it, hated the going through
Tears spawning tears, two layers
Of blankets, one above and one beneath
Pain lancing through darkness,
A desperate pride inching
Sideways on a tightrope
You wouldn’t believe either, what might come
From such a storm.
And he was wrong, it was not his
Hall of Fame. It’s no one’s.
We belong to each other.
We cannot pull away.
We are children suspended
between two flags.
