.

All over the baseball league

In every game

They were denouncing the disease “ALS”

Which stands for something

Of which I’m not sure

.

And now here’s this sanguine dude

With a bizarre, contrived facial expression

Ejaculating any number of bland,

Stock responses to questions,

.

He funded the project,

.

He wants to beat ALS and

.

He’s so lucky to have met all these people

.

But you can see it in his eyes that he’s

Rolling in the profit and

In his mind he’s somewhere else

So I switch it from baseball and

See the Mavericks and Clippers go down to the wire

In basketball

105-100 and

.

We all weasel through

Dire excursions and

Cut off a limb to

Do what we want to love and

Nobody started the fire.

It is

A prank call

To your libido

As you withstood six blows

And they got you with the seventh

On the Sabbath day

Nothing running free and

The flesh hound cowering

All grayed from

Noise and tremor

I drive to the library with high hopes,

A car pulling out of the narrow,

Curved exit right as I’m

Trying to pull in.

.

I walk in to the scene

Of a man talking very loudly

To his four-year-old kid

Who was, himself,

Very loud.

.

I walk back to 813.

.

I look around.

.

It does not look like a poetry section.

.

The editions are bright and bold,

Suggesting a cluster of

Mass media fiction.

.

The books are proud,

Massive and prominent,

Not bedraggled, worn,

Humble and embarrassed.

.

I open one of the books

And it’s something about

“I live in a body

That the world does not think is my own.”

.

I slam it closed.

.

I open another book.

.

It’s a woman mentioning

That her father beat her

And now is on his death bed

And I cannot truly say that she “details”

This, since there are no details.

.

It is like an experience

Of getting hit with a blunt

Baseball bat by a

Person who is bored.

.

I am bound,

Now, to that

Poetess’ meaningless

Beatings, and the

Carboard,

.

Meaningless reality

Of this father lying in

This hospital, ascribed

.

Many things which are

Worn, bedraggled,

Embarrassed and humble,

.

And haphazardly passed off as

Nascent.

.

I look on the lower shelf and see

David Sedaris and think of his

Moral compunction

Delivered

.

In flummoxed,

Deadened sentences.

.

Finally I go

Over to the librarian

And ask her if there’s a “classics”

Section and I find that and

It’s all fiction, no poetry,

The one exception being

The Odyssey, which I have at home.

.

An attractive blonde girl

Is suspicious of me

And traipses out of the library

Hurriedly

And I can’t help but think,

Did she find what she needed here,

Maybe too much.

.

I have the weird premonition

Then

To go to my old middle school

But I go to my old high school instead

Realizing that that would make more sense.

.

There’s a baseball game going on

And I saunter in, passing

The “donations” box with

One one-dollar bill in my wallet.

.

After about 15 minutes,

I see an old friend

And say hi, wave.

.

He comes over and talks to me.

.

Unbeknownst to me,

He’s been teaching freshman algebra

At the high school

On a substitute’s wage and

.

We exchange stories of high schoolers,

Me telling of the 16-year-old black dishwasher

At work

Trying to pick a fight with me

Outside work

Right in front of a cop

And saying “Run it” over and over,

Him telling of the kids saying they’re gonna

“Smoke his pack.”

.

I look at the fat, black

Pitcher of my high school

Who’s the son of one of my old friends,

.

And that lazy way he has of

Helming that ball over the plate,

.

I look across the street

At the stately houses,

Houses which possess people

Who use bug spray, people

Who work dishwashers,

.

People who spend $8000

To replace furnaces and

People looking for a way,

.

And,

You might say,

This was what I’d been looking for

All along.

I once met a man on the street and

In an explosion of light

He gave me a smile,

Some humor,

And a piece of advice

That stuck with me forever

As my beacon in life.

.

I would see that man at the grocery store and

There would always be somebody in front of him

Who’d lost their food stamps

Or was trying to use faulty coupons.

.

But he’d never yell at the customer and

He’d look over and see me and say,

Hey,

Almost with that whole bath of light he’d wielded on the street.

.

I would see that man

At the movie theater,

Seeing bad movies and

Always stepping on pieces of gum

That had been thrown into the aisle.

.

He wouldn’t notice me in the theater.

.

I would see that man getting his car fixed and

Always have to get a new replacement part

Because they couldn’t fix it and

Couldn’t find one used.

.

He never got mad at the mechanics and

He would see me out of his peripheral vision

While scowling and sweating

And he wouldn’t say “Hey,”

But I could tell he was embracing me in his own way,

I could tell he held out a little light for me.

.

I could see it in his skin.

.

I could see it in the past.

.

I would see that man,

When we got older,

Bringing coupons into Arby’s

And paying the cashier with pennies and nickels and

He would see me and not recognize me,

Smiling at me with greyed, addled eyes

That poured a trace amount of light out of them

So small that you’d have never known it was in there.

.

But I saw it.

.

I saw it in the past and I remembered that man.

.

And I would see that man in the newspaper,

Deceased, divorced from his wife,

Leaving two kids who live in town and

Enjoyed going to the movies and

Eating in restaurants

.

And I would sit back and marvel

And bask in the glow

Of the beautiful life he had lived

And how it had touched me.

I’m living out here in the middle of nowhere

Two miles south of South Bend

Because in town there are burglaries in

Every neighborhood I can afford.

.

It’s ok, in general,

Nice and comfortable,

But sometimes when I’m heading out of town at night

After work

Into the endless black abyss

I get this really ominous feeling.

.

The other night

Before I went running after work

I got it really bad but

Didn’t encounter any dogs, luckily.

.

Today I sit on a beautiful Saturday

Before work and

The only sound to be heard

.

Is this dude up the road

Firing his gun. He doesn’t seem

To do it in any particular system or

With any certain rhythm,

.

Giving the impression

That

It’s just something he does

Until he feels a way

That’s different

From how he feels now.

.

I do that too.

.

I go out for beers after work, sometimes.

.

And hell, it works.

.

That’s a lot of what this world is —

Mortal beings striving for immortality.

*Sunshine Sammy returns: “Why don’t you wanna fu** Missy Elliott, di**head?”

.

Why don’t you wanna fu** Missy Elliott, di**head? You too good to fu** her there, homie? You have to come on to her so we can sell this song that goes “Put your thing down / Flip it and reverse it”. Whew! You’re throwing a stick in the spokes of the American economy. You don’t like big hoes? Just last week you said you liked big hoes? What? Oh, that was Mike D. Look, just wait ‘til you see her hair. It’s made outta rattlesnake hide. Who do YOU love? I’ll let you think about it, princess.

I am holding my phone

At my front window,

.

I am taking a picture and

I am cropping the picture, afterward

On my phone.

.

I am looking at the picture

And all it illustrates such as

A tree with new apple blossoms,

Half-formed April grass and some

Lilting Spring leaves on the

Budding trees around.

.

I read poems that are long.

.

I read poems that don’t rhyme.

.

I read poems that morph and shift,

Poems in which lines themselves

Flee the margins and

Poems by black Americans

That cut through the system like a

Knife through a buffalo’s hide.

.

I shake my head

At the rash of humans

And their gluttony and their violence

And

.

I shake my head at America’s unwieldy

40-hour work week and

.

In my dreams I give a newborn babe new life and

I shake my head at this life I have given

Like scratching an itch while

Cowering behind a rampart of distraction.

The hills are alive

With the sound of consumers

Stepping within products

Into a uniform reality

That everyone acknowledges

But frowns at

Like Coolio

But look how the people glare

When you walk by doing you,

Their whole constitutions

Given to an earthquake of want

And look at all the times

The smiling lady in the middle

Sat with a sick grandmother

And fetched her water

And fetched her blood

And took something of her too as

That deceased grandmother smiles through those eyes and

Experiences

Like Cubist pixels

Comprise this life in opaque

Euphoria

 

The cosmological waves of the universe

Ripple and undulate in the stead

Of her all-informing presence,

With eyes like electric avenues

Of composite signals

Which take in and inform,

Now morphed to exclusive informants by

The way the sunglasses fall on her face.

Kindness is not innate.

It is

Something

We do

Because we believe

In it.

It is

An ideal

Of which animals are incapable and

It carries enough intrigue to typically

Act as an ethos

Of itself.