I Just Want to Thank Jesus For

Thinking outside the foul pole

of the Taoist physics of baseball,

outside the ever-expanding slice of pi,

outside the statistical analysis

of all the big names gone cold

in late spring, for the Great Nine

split into four-point-five pointed stars,

for numbers becoming no Boy Scout,

believe you, me ...

Billy Beane chased the ghost

out of the machine dream

when the Bronx Bombers

flew overhead and the mobbed bosses

stole it all back: the rivers, the streams,

the automated stacks of bats sponsored by

the volcanic flows of the sick and dying

in the psychological steam so bad

we could barely scream out a defiant

chorus of "Sweet Caroline" ...

And so the baseball heart, hit out of the park,

flew out of me, as I flew out ... And then the Capistranos

of consistency on the mound raised a fist in the air

thanking Jesus, who, when he appeared

suddenly, on command, in center field,

hit the ground, mortal, in terror, naked, alone,

hurting bad, scared and mad at the scene

of so many ballplayers, thanking God

for the home runs hit in his name,

as if he cared ...

This pitch, sponsored by Jesus ...

This spit, sponsored by Satan ...

This Moneyball sponsored by ...

This and this and this

on the scored and board

of the Lord, Oh Jesus,

Oh Jesus, Oh Jesus ...

The Triumph of Human Error

A close play at the plate

but the umpire called him out

A review immediately revealed

the catcher missed the tag

Mariners make the challenge

A minute or so goes by

Seattle to New York

New York to Seattle

The umpire hears

the call from abroad

and waves safe to a roar

of the crowd marveling

at how our technology

can reveal the world in truth

But wait, what's this?

The judge waved wrong

The remote booth

from across the country

had missed the call, too

The judge misjudged

and the whole concept

of the aching desire

for justice is foiled

and the world

gone shit in a hand bag

does a devilish dance

Ballpark Paintings (for Andy Jurinko)

Wall-wide murals at Mickey Mantle's,

a central perk hot spot fashionable

with super exact paintings

of Ebbets and Crosley Park

and Yankee Stadium situations

up the ying and yang

for me, the hour-late,

because nobody from Arizona

ever knows what time it is

But the baseball artiste had waited,

patient enough for me

to do a drop in from the desert,

for a burger and some chatter,

to bat with a baguette,

as the son of a South Texan

bewildered already by the bowels

of Penn Station, intimidated

as the wild wolf chased on the field

by sea gulls at Shea Stadium,

who had spent the previous day

walking across Manhattan

to his studio, wearing a ridiculous

reddish purple beret,

a spontaneous purchase

at a military supply store,

who reached the apartment

in the shadow of the Twin Towers,

eviscerated but enduring

the wide-eyed, world-weary

embrace of glass canyons,

the smell of sweet rolls

and garbage wafting in from rows

and rows of back alleys, taxis rolling

like bullets, wild-eyed preachers

mixed up by dirty magazines,

every language spoken at once

as public drinkers, private thinkers,

compassionate aliens in action

sold books on blankets

Only the pastoral lights could paint

a bolt-down for the bogey out there,

saving me from a big bad swing at my

home run hollow head

Arlington Stadium

Arlington Stadium diamond is buried

In a Kilimanjaro of scooped-out pond peat.

Right behind old home plate,

Mounds of green grass bubble,

Claiming Saint Jude's glory against

Staccato, encyclopedic volumes

Of late-season, dog day fades.

They say an old black man--

Dressed in a guard's uniform

With a Texas Rangers' insignia--

Patrols the sun-punished remains

Of Arlington's tinker toy park

As if games were still going on

Every night at the Turnpike.

He makes the rounds.

Regularly checks the cluttered ramps,

Seat backs strewn in an autumn pile of leaves,

Chairless rows of buckled, heat-bent steel,

Windows spiderwebby in little white lies,

Dark stairwells with broken chairs,

An eight-ton scoreboard lying dead,

Knotted telephone lines stunned into silence,

The gutted luxury boxes desolate except for

The speckled and cracked wall mirrors

Indicating a premonition of

Seven more years of second place.

He listens for the haunting echoes

And speaks to the ghosts of overturned Poseidon

While the refuse of Rangers' history

Is just a salvage barge away...

If they can just find a buyer

For the steel.

This is my dream denied.

This is my lost thirteenth year.

My found treasure. Aired only in box scores

In a brown and faded and distant archive,

Ted Williams managed outcasts so bad

Dick Billings was a shooting Lone Star.

Is there anything of value I can reclaim?

Where is Dick Billings' red, white and blue

Wrist band or Mickey Rivers' broken speech?

Where is chatter so remote as to defy transcription?

After the last game they lifted home plate by helicopter

Like a clump of old sod they used to replant Comiskey,

And locked it into the new park

Where there are new dreams for others. Not me.

Just saw Nolan Ryan, he's doin' fine--Not me.

There is my youth but where are my dreams?

We moved San Antone in seventy-two

And I never saw one damn game here.

I stayed locked in a closet for a decade

Longing for that girl at the soda pop stand.

Now I'm back to break off

A piece of useless memorabilia

And wash it with tears to give it soul.

Somewhere in the humid winds

I hear the whisper

Of muted, hospital sounds.

Life is Practice

How many brain-dead

baseball diamond drills

do we need to run, rookie?

Do we need to purchase

for you an insurance policy

to protect you against

the sorcery of blurring

curves, the chin music

of mommie balls

coming in fast?

Spring training

is the hope-forming time

to scrunch scar tissue,

to test aches subtracted

from the totem death-dance

of old brown city street snow,

of writer's block shaped

into three white bases,

to take into our nostrils

the sweet fragrance of March

And after the vets have tapped

the buzzing fridge of free cokes,

turning terminal pains

into mere dietary disease,

we must line up trainer's tape

to meet and meet together

at the left-field foul pole

to intensify the muscle memories,

the heated up PFP, PFP, PFP ...

the endless ritual

of pitcher-to-first,

pitcher taking the lob,

spiking the bag

This is how we practice

each thin temporal moment,

experience to ascribe antidotes

for thoughtlessness into decisions

because only repetition can influence

our grace before ownership's

remote tentacled lens

so if we can make it to October,

if we get lucky,

maybe you'll thank me

So don't be a loud-mouthed rook

wasted for higher purposes

beyond the reasoning of mere mortals

Don't talk back to me!

Don't think to much!

It's bad for everyone concerned

Don't carouse with wild women

sent to stand on your bases

and don't talk money with me

We pay you plenty

and candy comes after

Because I knew John McGraw

Who fussed himself silly

Made teammates enemies

But they played great

Despite his tyrannical self:

Gawd how I loved his glare,

like Joe Torrie's blank stare;

a poker face almost saying, man,

I loathe baseball, I wanna go home

I heard stories about such skips:

See, this pitcher, this catcher,

they hate each other, so they throw

harder and harder to each other

and surely at some point

there's got to be a limit,

a point where their palms

turn red, maybe even bleed

until all innings end, unforgiven

By the time they get back

to the bench they are screaming

at each other so ol' skipper

comes over, spits, and says,

"Okay boys, you go back

into your pretty clubhouse

and have at it. May the worst

man win. I'll warm up Johnson

and Mack, get the equipment on."

So the two embattlers

go behind closed doors

and end up killing each other

The general manager calls

new recruits up from Triple-A

to replace them both:

Everybody wins

Chasing the Rabbit Ball

The deep need

to point the toe toward the plate,

releasing the pitch toward the pit,

as I consider the fine art

of making surreal threads

for baseballs, scuffing the stuff,

making it real and raw,

a finger food for the not so famous,

keeping the dead ball down,

chastising the ancestors of Curt Flood,

those all diamond decked out

in silver and gold necklaces,

glittering chains telegraphed

for the coming of screw balls,

superstitious as hell,

awaking to the heavenly bells of spring,

where promise is a red bird on a wing ...

Hear the crowd ... Hear it sing!

All you free agents of the mind:

You know I'm no perfectionist

of any kind, only a man struck

by lightning twice

in the minor league

of my own mind,

a simple child ticketed thrice

on opening day

Sandman

Sing a dainty dirg

for the New York Yankees,

but note the fact

the sun arose the next day

as all the victories

stand, sure as yellow sunflowers

in the fall, falling away ...

Now that the best team

money can buy needs

first aid from the tip jar

for the daily

emergency management

donut fund, the Bombers

and the Joker

are on the run,

and the gangster managers

of U.S. Banks are running

from pranks organized

by mischievous teenagers

running out of bullets

playing digital games,

the bragging rights

now a toss up into the air,

a toxic point-and-shoot affair

of agents so say it ain't so

the best team in baseball

needs to reload, since the Sandman

can no longer come in the Ninth

to ice over the Show

and those who gave a flying f ...

about football can stand

and listen to make sharp yelps

about how I'm paying my own price

with wobbly knees, posts as painful

as typhoons out of season

as we ask a Navajo woman

draped in a royal blue

Dallas Cowboys' number nine jersey

in a defense against the sound and fury

of the noise of the laundry room,

focused on her cell phone like a weapon,

a fence against the outside world,

which sends in scores and more

as the rocking horse hick drones

on about how much his Saturday morning

hangover hurts over the radio,

and neither of us can see the country

crooner because today, sponsored

Ford trucks, is the anniversary

of the day I confessed to crimes

I never committed, places I never

will see, to things I can't remember,

forces I have no knowledge of, waves

I can sense but not see, feel or hear

churning up the winds, the rains, the snows,

falling from above, pushing up from below,

in patterns beyond my science,

no longer local, just passing through,

not on the ball, like Lucy removing

the football to make me look like the fool

after your ice-cold Bud is just another

beer can on a giant empty parking lot

where gas-guzzling lads, ladies in cheerleader

uniforms are stripped, cloned and sent

on their way for a full day

of prayer and fasting, knowing:

The sports godz have had their say

Babe Ruth, Superman

Walking unlimited miles to whiskey
in the bars near Central Park,
Searching for the living
among the dead: History comes
in threes. It's a very
Roman Catholic thing
and there are as many anti-christs
as the incalculable stars in the sky

Oh great genie, oh Babe, over the fence man,
a poor boy, but genes set right,
fine-tuned antenna to the natural world--
Big boar Roaring Twenty appetites
scorching Victorian-styled city streets,
humming New Orleans Dixieland rag

Did he command the universal flux
cavorting with whores along Congo Square?
Did he find his Elvis there?

Black holes subtract starlight
and animal magnetism flirts with flash powder.
Walking into the good Cardinal's
green cathedral
he ignites the musty atmosphere,
slouching toward home plate to be born.

Uttering God's inviolate immaculate
sense of a woman's softest parts,
he penetrates the thin veil masking laws
we believe, tentatively, to exist:
He had the heart
of an anarchist.

From "The Road to Mythville"

Box Core

Way up on the third deck

the strikes and balls

are a just a flip

of your emotional coin,

and the money

is miraculous music

jangling all around

like clouds

of mango butter

as the big league batter

dismisses the clatter

and focuses in

on the matter

at hand ...

A tip of the Saint Louis hat:

"A Cardinals fan?" ...

No, not even a fan,

don't even care

about the strangeness

of wings, the meaning

of things, nor the easy

stream of this here requiem,

just my zen baseball box score,

just my need to make

a connection above the war

Curt Schilling's bloody sock

goes up for sale

as his Titanic sinks

into a laundry pile

that hasn't been washed

since two-thousand and four

and now it's dirtier

than nine presidential campaigns

Bobby Valentine's February promises

are set ablaze by a fireball of Yankee

down and outers, up and comers

who have returned in October

in a snail mail of Saturn rings ...

I just can't think

of every thing