My good friend Ryan Mayers sent me a scorecard that I kept when he, Donnie Sabs and I took in a Cubs game a couple of seasons ago. My scorecards are usually a mess, and this was no different – a mix of hieroglyphs, scribbles and meaningless notes that only I could understand. Reading one from two-years ago was a particularly entertaining exercise, and it gave life to the following poem.

SCORECARD


The psychic in the bleachers calls a leadoff homerun
because of the wind and the hitter’s hot streak.
She twinkles her nose like a cartoon witch
and spooks her friends. In the second, a man
with a red foam finger misses the mustard on his chin.
Clouds look like dolphins in the third. A kid points this out
to his father walking back from the john. In the fourth,
fans wave the runner home on a two-out hit.
He’s out by a foot. It’s our fault when the manager gets tossed.
A foul pop in the fifth becomes a struggle for turf.
Flying popcorn. An elbow to the eye. In the sixth,
we anticipate the ritual of the mound trot,
the pitching change. When last call
and the seventh-inning stretch collide, my friend recalls
what Ken Burns said – that Jesus died in the on deck circle.
The sun ducks away long enough in the eighth to lose ourselves
in the slow loft of the wrong team’s deep fly. That’s when
dolphin clouds turn into whales, the sky opens with a quick
sad rain. The last rally fades in the ninth.
The ladies one row ahead cheer for their boys
like Little League moms. All claps and first names.

The following is poem number 9 of 2009’s NaPoWriMo – 30 poems in 30 days during the month of April. The original prompt was, “If you send me the right amount of cash, I can help you”. I deviated more with this one than any other so far – the initial writing involved a phone call, which is all that remains in the version below. Somewhere there’s a poem about a telemarketer waiting to happen.

CHICAGO

Remember getting drunk in Chicago after the game
when I called Soriano’s home run in the first?
You bet me a beer I couldn’t do it again. I tried
and bought. Then we got caught between bars

in Wrigleyville while a rain washed down. You told me
Claire was pregnant, you were scared shitless,
couldn’t stop thinking about other women,
not with the milk-fed Midwestern girls
busting out of Cubs shirts.

You bet me I wouldn’t say hello to the two
who smiled behind the next pub’s smoke.
After I did we talked about how easy it would be
to do something and forget, then called our wives
to say we missed them, couldn’t wait to be back.

We finished, caught the long train to where
we were staying, went out for last call
then fell asleep, woke hung over, got our flights
and split the country in half.

I was thinking about you right before you called
to say your girl was born. By now you’ve worked through
thoughts of leaving, the ones we all have,
even our fathers who never said.

Let’s be men like them, do the right thing when
we don’t know what it is, just work off
a list of do’s and don’ts, as easy as calling a shot
like I did that day in Chicago before we got drunk.

-

Prescient Night rises up from the dust of Atrocities Pre-Dawn, something I was working on shortly after the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. There’s not much resemblance between the two poems, only that both have a nighttime feel.

Prescient Night

There’s smoke on the cliff
up where space between houses
is vast like countries, continents
that drift apart yet
come together

the way LA and San Francisco
will be neighbors one day,
ten-thousand years later
the Dodgers and Giants
are crosstown rivals again.

By then
we’ll be buried under ice,
ground into ash
or however the world ends
next time.

These thoughts squirm
among rooftop stars
into a long fall game
at twilight, rows of cigar smoke
popcorn and some kid
reaches in vain
to squeeze a foul pop
falling, falling

toward bare hands,
spilt beer and cheers
rain down like so much dust
to dream and hold.

Atrocities Pre-Dawn

While the world sleeps
because victims never know
and anyone who cares
is dreaming.

Killers can eat breakfast that way,
actions don’t count at night.

Consciences forget these things
and good is saved
when God is looking.

No one knows what’s coming
then air raids make their music
in the dark.

Once word spreads
it’s already last night

to the benefit of news,
the story suddenly old,
cameras off, fiction
has room to unfold.